Tuesday I went to the IVF clinic for one last test (but that's what they always say, it's always one last test. Then I get a phone call asking me to come in and donate blood when the moon is in Aries or participate in a Hopi fertility dance or some other weird shit like that.) So I head off again to get tested.

This time, the clinic is empty. There are no hopeful couples holding hands nervously, no one staring studiously at the latest edition of Hello!, no one sipping coffee from a plastic cup. Strangely the newspaper was spread over the coffee table screaming about Gordon Brown about to become a father again (you'd think the hospital would weed this kind of thing out, as the waiting room is generally filled with infertile women hopped up on incredible amounts of synthetic hormones), but I guess that free speech does work even in fertility clinics.

I'm flipping through a magazine admiring Pink's wedding dress when the nurse calls my name.

'Hi Helen, sorry to keep you waiting,' she says, smiling.

'No worries,' I reply.

'This is Louise,' the nurse says, pointing to a young woman that looks like she's on the better side of her twenties (i.e. she lined up to get Baby Spice's autograph when they played Royal Albert Hall.) 'If it's ok, Louise is going to observe and assist?'

Oh dear.

See, I always get the newbies. Always. I recognize that it's all a learning process, that hands-on is good, that training is needed, blah blah blah. But it must be something about my face or my naïve 'I'm an American' accent-I get every trainee that comes along. If there's a trainee phlebotomist around, I am getting her, as she compliments me on my enormous veins in my arms and then fails to find a single one of them but does make enough track marks for anyone who sees me in short sleeves to ask if I've looked into an honorary membership to Narcotics Anonymous. If there is a trainee dentist I swear she gets out the Black and Decker drill and cackles with glee. But in general, I don't mind if trainees are around.

Except this test, it's a chlamydia swab, a standard for IVF patients here but the one test they forgot to do. And a chlamydia swab? Yup. It's a knees up in the stirrups deal. So trainee chick would be the first trainee that is looking eye level at the female equivalent of the crown jewels.

I sigh. 'Sure, she can watch. Just no pictures on the web, ok?'

We walk into the exam room, and the nurse starts raising the stirrups. 'You're long-legged, so we need to make sure the stirrups are nice and long,' she says. She hands me a long blue napkin that is the equivalent of the world's largest roadside gas station paper towel and instructs me to take my jeans and knickers off and wear the paper towel around my waist. I do this, and then I look up to see she's getting the speculum out.

The speculum. A woman's best friend. The next guy that whines to me about a prostate exam, I will level him with the following-you're bitching about a finger. A finger. Instead, try a speculum, a piece of cold steel that is shaped like a duck's beak, only once it's inserted in you it opens up wide, not unlike a duck's beak, and holds things wide open. So as far as the finger concerns go, until you get the equivalent of two hands reaching in and propping the butt passage open 4 inches, this conversation is closed.

'Are you ok with this, Helen?' asks the nurse.

'Oh sure, I breeze. No problem.' I reply, heading for the table.

And suddenly, I become a babbling idiot.

'I mean, I've had a number of speculums in me due to IVF, pap smears, you know and I've had sex. Lots of sex. I mean-not lots of sex with lots of different people, that would make me a whore and I am so not a whore, I mean lots of sex with the same person which is totally different.'

Shut up, Helen.

'And pap smears, they're old hat but you know how you always get those old duffer gynecologists that insist on making small talk with you when they're here but the whole time I'm like-seriously, man, just get the fingers in and out, woudja'?'

Ohmigod, shut up, Helen, shut up!

My legs slide off the edge of one of the stirrups, sending it wildly swinging towards the nurse's head. I go into babbling overdrive and am talking without breathing in a voice two octaves above my normal speaking voice.

'OhmigodI'msorryI'mnotnervousatallandIdon'thavetoomuchsexhowaboutwejust getthisoverwith?"

SHUT UP YOU FUCKING IDIOT, SHUT UP!

The exam begins. The trainee stares hard at my beaver, and it's difficult to feel normal about this. The speculum goes in, I try to take shallow breaths, and then at the end the nurse instructs the trainee on how to remove the speculum. 'You undo the screw but don't release the tension, as that causes the sides to flab in.'

Oh my God. I'm in hell. I have a flabby hooch.

'All women have this happen to them, when the speculum is removed it's like the Red Sea re-parting,' the mind-reading nurse says to me, raising over my raised knees to assure me.

Oh my God, my space is of Biblical proportions.

The whole embarrassment thus over, I dress and get my ass out of there as fast as possible, reassured that I am finally done with all of these tests.

Thus beginneth round 2 shortly.

-H.

PS-If anyone needs me I'll be on a 12 hour flight to San Francisco, where I hope to rabbit punch the guy who created Rice-a-Roni as I hate that shit. For the next 12 hours I'll be watching video on demand, hating humanity, stressing about if I picked the right seat or not and if the beagles will come by in the airport and find Statia's cheese, and missing Angus terribly.

I'll be doing that last one a whole lot.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:30 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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