(IU)D Day. 4/21/14
The tl;dr version for those who don't want all the gory, TMI details: I got an IUD installed. It went well and wasn't as bad I was fearing. I am doing fine.
The long version:
As I have no doubt written before, I was pretty wigged out, anticipating the installation. I did a lot of research online, reading all about the procedure, and lots of women's experiences with it. The overall consensus seemed to be that it was unpredictable, and varied tremendously, with some women saying it was the most painful thing they had every experienced, a "10" on a 1-to-10 pain scale, and that they screamed or felt like they were going to faint, and other women basically saying "Eh, it was uncomfortable, but not that big a deal."
So, those were pretty wide parameters, in terms of what to expect. It could either be horribly painful, or no big deal, or somewhere in between. Realistically, in my rational mind, I knew that I was pretty good at tolerating pain, and that it would be over very quickly, and that I could handle it. When I was in my early 20's I paid someone to jab needles through my nipples, essentially just for kicks (a piercing) and I have tattoos. But of course, the anxious, emotional side of my mind read the horror stories on the internet and got really freaked out. Over the past couple weeks, backing out crossed my mind several times. I thought about calling Kaiser back and canceling the appointment. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, because I knew that would be over-reacting, and it couldn't be that bad. I realized I just needed to expect it to be okay, but be prepared, just in case it was hard.
As a way of dealing with this anticipatory anxiety, I dedicated myself to elaborate preparation rituals. I moved my TV from my living room to my bedroom, so I could watch in bed. I got magazines, a heating pad, snacks and easy to prepare food. I had half a bottle of ibuprofen, but it had an expiration date in 2013, so I threw it out and got a new one. The old ones were probably still fine, but I was paranoid that they might have lost potency, and I didn't want to risk taking wimpy, past-their-prime pain killers, when I needed full strength.
I made sure to have a filling lunch around noon, so I would not be hungry. I smoked a little bit of weed, not enough to make me really feel stoned, but just enough to ease my nerves a little bit, which I think helped. I packed my ipod, set up with the sounds of waves crashing, rainfall, and native american flute music, and a hankerchief soaked in lavender and rose geranium-scented water (in a zip-loc bag) into my purse. When the GID arrived at 1:30, to pick me up for the 2:15 appointment, I took 4 ibuprofen tablets. This seemed like a lot, because I usually only take 1 or 2. But everything on the internet said to take 800 mg, which is 4 200mg pills. He drove me over there, and went in with me. Apparently, after I got called in for the appointment, he went and got a burrito in the Kaiser cafeteria. I am glad he wasn't just sitting there waiting, being bored.
So, after taking my vitals (P.S., shit, I weigh the same as I did when I went in before. Goddamn Passover and it's delicious food!) they gave me a pregnancy test. Which was kind of unnecessary, since I haven't had sex since my period started, so it was unlikely I was pregnant, but whatever, I can pee in a cup if they want to be 100% sure. As instructed, I undressed from the waist down and wrapped the hospital gown sheet thing around my waist. I put in my earbuds and listened to my calming sounds, smelled my aromatherapy, closed my eyes, and just tried to take deep breaths and not freak out too much, as my nerves were really on edge, and I was feeling like I might start crying.
The procedure was performed by a Nurse Practicioner, not by my doctor, as I was expecting. So I was momentarily surprised to see a new face come through the door. But I didn't mind, and she was very nice and personable. I had not decided between the paraguard and the mirena. The mirena had more appealing side effects (lighter periods, possibly stopping altogether) but I was concerned because all their media said it was not recommended for women who had never been pregnant (i.e. me). So I thought I would ask the doctor about it and see what she thought. The NP I saw today, whose name was Sandy, told me to just ignore the warnings, and that mirena was totally fine for never-pregnant women. She said she had worked at Planned Parenthood before coming to Kaiser, and she had put them in lots of women of all ages and pregnancy histories, and it was not a problem. She also allayed my fears that it would be more painful to install and have in me, saying that the size difference was so minute that it really didn't seem to make much difference. So that was reassuring, and it was reassuring to hear that she had worked at PP and installed lots of IUDs before, and I decided to just go with the Mirena.
As a side note, when I went into the exam room, they had both the mirena and paraguard boxes there on the counter, and the boxes are kind of comically large. They come packaged in a box that looks like something you would put a necktie in at Nordstrom. Or like, a couple pounds of See's candy, only flatter and longer. It's kind of like if you cut a cereal box in half vertically. This might not seem like a gigantic box, but it looks big when you are contemplating having whatever's inside it stuck in your vagina. When you are contemplating insertion, you really would prefer to see a box that looks like it's the size of a package of red vines. Or like a DVD case. You want to see something small and like, in proportion to where it's going to go in your body. Luckily, I am relieved to report that the box size is not representative of the equipment inside it. It's just excessive packaging.
So the actual procedure itself was... painful, but not as bad as I had feared. They use a slightly larger speculum (the duck-bill-looking contraption that keeps your junk open so they can see around in there) and that didn't really hurt, just kind of felt like... pressure. Then she swabbed the cervix with iodine to disinfect it, warning me that the iodine would probably leak out, and not to be worried about brownish discharge later. Then she had to, I guess, basically pry my cervix open and put some sort of tool in there to keep it open. That was the first part that hurt. I think she described it as being "tweezers". That hurt, but not that much, maybe a 5-6. Then she had to do the "sounding" which is when they stick some sort of measurement device up there to see how long the uterus is. I didn't get a look at it, but I imagine this thing being basically like the dipstick you use to check the oil level in your car. That part hurt. I would say it was like, maybe an 8 on a 1-to-10 scale. It hurt enough that I clenched my muscles, clenched my hands together and said "OW." But I didn't cry or scream or faint or anything, and it was maybe 5-10 seconds. She said I was 8 cm, which is perfect for an IUD, and that my uterus was at a good angle, and not tilted or whatever, and that it should go in fine. Then she inserted the mirena deployment tool, which hurt slightly less, maybe like a 7. She talked me through it, warning me when she was about to do something that might hurt, so that was helpful. Then she deployed the mirena, the arms when up, and that was that. She took all the tools and contraptions out of my va-jay-jay, and said I was all done. She warned me that the cervix-opening thingy, I think it's called a tenaculum or something, had kind of bitten into me, and there was a little bleeding, so I might notice a little blood for the rest of day, but not to be alarmed by it.
I was expecting it to hurt while the procedure was being performed, and I was also expecting to be in pain for a while afterward, possibly even for a couple days. But that was not the case for me. I felt fine almost immediately afterward. I had read stories about women who had to lay on the exam table for a while before they could get it together enough to get up and get dressed and go home. But I just kind of lay there for a minute, just sort of absorbing "Wow, I did it, it's over." and then I got up and got dressed and walked out. I was happy that the GID was there waiting for me, to give me a hug, but as I said to him while we were walking out "I feel fine. I could go to work right now."
So that was about 6 hours ago, and I have pretty much been fine since then. There have been some twinges, maybe a 2-3 on the pain scale, that just kind of feel like mild menstrual cramps. It's kind of like, if I stop and think about it, I notice a little discomfort, but I'm not consciously aware of it all the time. It's easy to ignore. Although I have noticed that it's a little more painful, for some reason, when I am in a sitting position (like right now, at my desk) than when I am laying down. If I start to feel worse, I can take some more ibuprofen.
So, we (GID and I) came back and lay down and cuddled and watched some TV for about an hour. Then he left, as he had some stuff to do, and I felt fine and didn't really require care. I lay around with the heating pad on my belly, not so much because I was in much pain, but just because it felt good. I read a magazine, and then took a nap. Then I woke up, microwaved a frozen burrito, and started writing this. GID texted me a few minutes ago, just to make sure I was still doing okay, which was sweet of him.
So, yeah. I would almost say that the worst part was the anticipating it, and all the anxiety of that. It's kind of like making an appointment to have someone punch you, but you don't know how hard. You know it's going to hurt, but you don't know how much. But, overall, I think it will be worthwhile. Not having to worry about birth control for 5 years, and maybe having my periods lighten or stop seems like a good trade-off for about 30 seconds of manageable pain.
Yesterday, as my brother and I were driving back from Easter in Firebaugh, I got sick. I think started because I hadn't eaten enough that day, so I started to get a headache. Then I took an aleve, on a too-empty stomach, which made me nauseated. Then we were in the car for like, 3 hours because there was traffic. By the time we got to my brother's place in Oakland, I was just focused on trying not to barf. Once we got into his apartment, I retched a little but didn't actually vomit, and then took a hot bath. I lay down on his bed for a little while, and when I felt better, he made me some pasta. After that I felt better enough to drive home, although then there was again horrible traffic, and it took me almost 2 hours to get from Oakland to Vallejo. So we left Firebaugh a little after 5pm, and I didn't get home until after 11pm. And that should have been 3 hours, with no traffic, 3.5 including dropping my brother off. Anyway, my point is that 30 seconds of pain was better than the hours of headache and nausea I had to deal with yesterday.
And one final side note: My cat has seemed to be extra..."attentive" lately. I don't know if it's that she can sense that I have been stressed out or what, but she has taken to coming and laying on my chest during the middle of the night and purring. This would be cute and endearing, if she wasn't also reaching up to touch my face with her claws. She doesn't scratch me per-se, she just kind of taps my face, like she is intentionally trying to wake me up. So it's just annoying. She also doesn't let me sleep in past about 7:30am. It's nice that she cares about me, I just wish she would care a little less while I was trying to sleep.
The long version:
As I have no doubt written before, I was pretty wigged out, anticipating the installation. I did a lot of research online, reading all about the procedure, and lots of women's experiences with it. The overall consensus seemed to be that it was unpredictable, and varied tremendously, with some women saying it was the most painful thing they had every experienced, a "10" on a 1-to-10 pain scale, and that they screamed or felt like they were going to faint, and other women basically saying "Eh, it was uncomfortable, but not that big a deal."
So, those were pretty wide parameters, in terms of what to expect. It could either be horribly painful, or no big deal, or somewhere in between. Realistically, in my rational mind, I knew that I was pretty good at tolerating pain, and that it would be over very quickly, and that I could handle it. When I was in my early 20's I paid someone to jab needles through my nipples, essentially just for kicks (a piercing) and I have tattoos. But of course, the anxious, emotional side of my mind read the horror stories on the internet and got really freaked out. Over the past couple weeks, backing out crossed my mind several times. I thought about calling Kaiser back and canceling the appointment. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, because I knew that would be over-reacting, and it couldn't be that bad. I realized I just needed to expect it to be okay, but be prepared, just in case it was hard.
As a way of dealing with this anticipatory anxiety, I dedicated myself to elaborate preparation rituals. I moved my TV from my living room to my bedroom, so I could watch in bed. I got magazines, a heating pad, snacks and easy to prepare food. I had half a bottle of ibuprofen, but it had an expiration date in 2013, so I threw it out and got a new one. The old ones were probably still fine, but I was paranoid that they might have lost potency, and I didn't want to risk taking wimpy, past-their-prime pain killers, when I needed full strength.
I made sure to have a filling lunch around noon, so I would not be hungry. I smoked a little bit of weed, not enough to make me really feel stoned, but just enough to ease my nerves a little bit, which I think helped. I packed my ipod, set up with the sounds of waves crashing, rainfall, and native american flute music, and a hankerchief soaked in lavender and rose geranium-scented water (in a zip-loc bag) into my purse. When the GID arrived at 1:30, to pick me up for the 2:15 appointment, I took 4 ibuprofen tablets. This seemed like a lot, because I usually only take 1 or 2. But everything on the internet said to take 800 mg, which is 4 200mg pills. He drove me over there, and went in with me. Apparently, after I got called in for the appointment, he went and got a burrito in the Kaiser cafeteria. I am glad he wasn't just sitting there waiting, being bored.
So, after taking my vitals (P.S., shit, I weigh the same as I did when I went in before. Goddamn Passover and it's delicious food!) they gave me a pregnancy test. Which was kind of unnecessary, since I haven't had sex since my period started, so it was unlikely I was pregnant, but whatever, I can pee in a cup if they want to be 100% sure. As instructed, I undressed from the waist down and wrapped the hospital gown sheet thing around my waist. I put in my earbuds and listened to my calming sounds, smelled my aromatherapy, closed my eyes, and just tried to take deep breaths and not freak out too much, as my nerves were really on edge, and I was feeling like I might start crying.
The procedure was performed by a Nurse Practicioner, not by my doctor, as I was expecting. So I was momentarily surprised to see a new face come through the door. But I didn't mind, and she was very nice and personable. I had not decided between the paraguard and the mirena. The mirena had more appealing side effects (lighter periods, possibly stopping altogether) but I was concerned because all their media said it was not recommended for women who had never been pregnant (i.e. me). So I thought I would ask the doctor about it and see what she thought. The NP I saw today, whose name was Sandy, told me to just ignore the warnings, and that mirena was totally fine for never-pregnant women. She said she had worked at Planned Parenthood before coming to Kaiser, and she had put them in lots of women of all ages and pregnancy histories, and it was not a problem. She also allayed my fears that it would be more painful to install and have in me, saying that the size difference was so minute that it really didn't seem to make much difference. So that was reassuring, and it was reassuring to hear that she had worked at PP and installed lots of IUDs before, and I decided to just go with the Mirena.
As a side note, when I went into the exam room, they had both the mirena and paraguard boxes there on the counter, and the boxes are kind of comically large. They come packaged in a box that looks like something you would put a necktie in at Nordstrom. Or like, a couple pounds of See's candy, only flatter and longer. It's kind of like if you cut a cereal box in half vertically. This might not seem like a gigantic box, but it looks big when you are contemplating having whatever's inside it stuck in your vagina. When you are contemplating insertion, you really would prefer to see a box that looks like it's the size of a package of red vines. Or like a DVD case. You want to see something small and like, in proportion to where it's going to go in your body. Luckily, I am relieved to report that the box size is not representative of the equipment inside it. It's just excessive packaging.
So the actual procedure itself was... painful, but not as bad as I had feared. They use a slightly larger speculum (the duck-bill-looking contraption that keeps your junk open so they can see around in there) and that didn't really hurt, just kind of felt like... pressure. Then she swabbed the cervix with iodine to disinfect it, warning me that the iodine would probably leak out, and not to be worried about brownish discharge later. Then she had to, I guess, basically pry my cervix open and put some sort of tool in there to keep it open. That was the first part that hurt. I think she described it as being "tweezers". That hurt, but not that much, maybe a 5-6. Then she had to do the "sounding" which is when they stick some sort of measurement device up there to see how long the uterus is. I didn't get a look at it, but I imagine this thing being basically like the dipstick you use to check the oil level in your car. That part hurt. I would say it was like, maybe an 8 on a 1-to-10 scale. It hurt enough that I clenched my muscles, clenched my hands together and said "OW." But I didn't cry or scream or faint or anything, and it was maybe 5-10 seconds. She said I was 8 cm, which is perfect for an IUD, and that my uterus was at a good angle, and not tilted or whatever, and that it should go in fine. Then she inserted the mirena deployment tool, which hurt slightly less, maybe like a 7. She talked me through it, warning me when she was about to do something that might hurt, so that was helpful. Then she deployed the mirena, the arms when up, and that was that. She took all the tools and contraptions out of my va-jay-jay, and said I was all done. She warned me that the cervix-opening thingy, I think it's called a tenaculum or something, had kind of bitten into me, and there was a little bleeding, so I might notice a little blood for the rest of day, but not to be alarmed by it.
I was expecting it to hurt while the procedure was being performed, and I was also expecting to be in pain for a while afterward, possibly even for a couple days. But that was not the case for me. I felt fine almost immediately afterward. I had read stories about women who had to lay on the exam table for a while before they could get it together enough to get up and get dressed and go home. But I just kind of lay there for a minute, just sort of absorbing "Wow, I did it, it's over." and then I got up and got dressed and walked out. I was happy that the GID was there waiting for me, to give me a hug, but as I said to him while we were walking out "I feel fine. I could go to work right now."
So that was about 6 hours ago, and I have pretty much been fine since then. There have been some twinges, maybe a 2-3 on the pain scale, that just kind of feel like mild menstrual cramps. It's kind of like, if I stop and think about it, I notice a little discomfort, but I'm not consciously aware of it all the time. It's easy to ignore. Although I have noticed that it's a little more painful, for some reason, when I am in a sitting position (like right now, at my desk) than when I am laying down. If I start to feel worse, I can take some more ibuprofen.
So, we (GID and I) came back and lay down and cuddled and watched some TV for about an hour. Then he left, as he had some stuff to do, and I felt fine and didn't really require care. I lay around with the heating pad on my belly, not so much because I was in much pain, but just because it felt good. I read a magazine, and then took a nap. Then I woke up, microwaved a frozen burrito, and started writing this. GID texted me a few minutes ago, just to make sure I was still doing okay, which was sweet of him.
So, yeah. I would almost say that the worst part was the anticipating it, and all the anxiety of that. It's kind of like making an appointment to have someone punch you, but you don't know how hard. You know it's going to hurt, but you don't know how much. But, overall, I think it will be worthwhile. Not having to worry about birth control for 5 years, and maybe having my periods lighten or stop seems like a good trade-off for about 30 seconds of manageable pain.
Yesterday, as my brother and I were driving back from Easter in Firebaugh, I got sick. I think started because I hadn't eaten enough that day, so I started to get a headache. Then I took an aleve, on a too-empty stomach, which made me nauseated. Then we were in the car for like, 3 hours because there was traffic. By the time we got to my brother's place in Oakland, I was just focused on trying not to barf. Once we got into his apartment, I retched a little but didn't actually vomit, and then took a hot bath. I lay down on his bed for a little while, and when I felt better, he made me some pasta. After that I felt better enough to drive home, although then there was again horrible traffic, and it took me almost 2 hours to get from Oakland to Vallejo. So we left Firebaugh a little after 5pm, and I didn't get home until after 11pm. And that should have been 3 hours, with no traffic, 3.5 including dropping my brother off. Anyway, my point is that 30 seconds of pain was better than the hours of headache and nausea I had to deal with yesterday.
And one final side note: My cat has seemed to be extra..."attentive" lately. I don't know if it's that she can sense that I have been stressed out or what, but she has taken to coming and laying on my chest during the middle of the night and purring. This would be cute and endearing, if she wasn't also reaching up to touch my face with her claws. She doesn't scratch me per-se, she just kind of taps my face, like she is intentionally trying to wake me up. So it's just annoying. She also doesn't let me sleep in past about 7:30am. It's nice that she cares about me, I just wish she would care a little less while I was trying to sleep.