Revenge of the Uterus - Part 1

I had a "What a relief" moment last month when I got the results of the biopsy after a procedure to my uterus. Little did I know it would set me off on yet another rabbit hole. But first, a bit of back story. 

One Sunday last January, it had been a month since I had moved into the US. My cousin and his family were coming home for dinner. My period had just started earlier that afternoon. I was cooking, and I had gone to change my pad and tampon. I had just changed, and was walking down the stairs when I felt like I had passed a really huge clot. I went back to the bathroom and found out I had completely soaked through the tampon and the pad. This was my reality for the next several hours. Everything I read on the internet told me that I needed to go to the ER immediately. I didn't. I was able to get an appointment with the OBGYN the next morning (however screwed up the US Healthcare system is, this was possible). She put me on progesterone pills and told me to come back in ten days to do an office hysteroscopy.

A hysteroscopy is a procedure where the surgeon uses a special equipment called a hysteroscope to see the inside of the uterus. Usually done under general anesthesia, the scope is inserted through the vagina and images are captured that helps the doctor see what is going on. I had had the same procedure down twice before in my life, one about 7 years ago, and one about five years ago. I knew what to expect, but this time there was one key difference. We couldn't get an OR schedule as they were all backed up due to the Omicron outbreak, so she had to do it in her office, without anesthesia. 

I am no stranger to hospitals and pain, not too queasy about blood, but having a probe inserted through the vagina past the cervix and into the uterus, with the doctor muttering under her breath "I can't see anything there is too much blood" over and over, was not fun. Suffice to say it was the most harrowing experience of my life. Having a surgery in my jaw bone to fix a tooth infection that had gone into the bone, again under local anesthesia, where I could see and hear the whirring of the machine sawing through the bone, and the burring machine fixing rough edges, while I could smell and taste the blood inundating my mouth, was a distant second in terms of pain and discomfort. 

Back to the hysteroscopy. My OBGYN had to abort the procedure as she could not visualize anything. She was able to extract tissue for a biopsy and she sent me back. I had had an ultrasound before the hysteroscopy. All the results came back over the next few days, by which time, my period finally came to an end. The biopsy looked clean, there was nothing cancerous or precancerous, the scan showed I had an endometrial polyp. 

(To be continued)