My name is Kris, and I am Black Irish, courtesy the grandfather I've never met...*ahem*
My name is Kris, and my favorite drink is an amaretto sour...
No.
My name is Kris, and I have polycystic ovarian syndrome....
Not quite.
My name is Kris. Today, I had my first pelvic ultrasound.
So I'm up and around this morning, washing my hair, putting stuff on my face. Taking my pills. A line from "Prozac Nation", paraphrased, comes to mind: "I have come to the inescapable conclusion that these are just too damn many pills." And there are. Two synthroid, three spironolactone, one Claritin, two multivitamins, two calcium supplements. Four snorts of Flonase.Yahoo, I'm a big druggie, all right.
so I drink the specified liter of water and head out. The trip takes me an hour and fifteen minutes on the bus, so I'm late. And I have to pee so badly that I'm dancing around. Yahoo.
I change into the requisite backless gown (hi...my ass isn't great enough that you really WANT me flashing the entire office...right?) and lie down on the table. She starts with the external, squirting ultrasound gel on my tummy. The sounding head itself was pleasantly warm--they've improved them in the years since I last had an ultrasound. The first thing that's immediately evident is my bladder, the size of the palm of my hand on-screen (yup, all that water) and surrounded by interesting striations. The radiologist has me pee a couple of times to get my bladder to the right size, and then she goes on a tour of my pelvis.
She points out my uterus (which looks funny from that angle), and my right ovary, a lumpy shadow on the screen. I squint. Definitely cystic. I'm not trained to interpret ultrasounds (X-rays, yes, a bit, but MRI and ultrasound were too new when I was studying medical stuff as a kid) but even to me, that doesn't look normal.
Then she goes off looking for my left ovary and eventually finds it, buried a bit deeper in my pelvis than it's supposed to be, and a bit farther to the left. It's significantly bigger than the right one, and just as lumpy. Then she looks at my kidneys. Compared to my ovaries, I have lovely kidneys. They're nice and smooth, with a nice curve to them. They're sporty. I could take them out shopping with no worries. They are their own accessories. And my spleen is there, too, a dark shadow on one of my kidneys. It looks a little bit threatening. I'd like to tell it to leave my nice kidneys alone.
I start worrying a little bit about my kidneys. Is my liver threatening them? The idea of my liver, so large and dark and brooding, seems menacing. My kidneys seem a bit too innocent to be thrown in with the rest of my internal organs. They're nice girls. You'd take them to a movie and then kiss them on the porch with the porch light on so their father could see you and then you'd send them inside, fully a half hour before their curfew.
But then I get to hop down from the table and go empty my bladder completely so we can do the oh-so euphemistic "internal exam". Yes, it is what you're thinking.
i come back form peeing and pop back up on the table, my butt propped up on a wedge-shaped pillow. Hey, this is kinda comfy. The radiologist showed me the probe, and then proceeds to poke me with the sonic dildo. She's slow and careful, gingerly poking around a bit, looking at my uterus. The right ovary is, again, easy to find. The right one's such a slut. There it was, displaying its cysts for all to see. This was a tad uncomfortable. Okay, it was like poking something pretty tender with something made of hard plastic, which is approximately what was going on. But we got the pictures taken, and all was well, and she quit poking the damn thing.
Then she goes looking for my left ovary again. Again, it's pretty hard to find. It's about an inch to the left and an inch deeper in my pelvis than it's supposed to be. (Hooray for nonstandard reproductive geography!) She she has to dig a bit, and poke a bit.
Ladies, you probably know what I'm taking about here. Most women have had the experience of a lover/dildo/tampon/finger going in at the wrong angle and hitting an ovary. Gentleman, imagine that someone has taken your testicles and tucked them up inside your body. They're safe there--no getting caught in things, no bumping against things, hardly anyone ever kicks you in them. They're cradled in protective muscle and bone and have some nice fat to keep them from rubbing on things. You forget you have them, as a matter of fact.
And then imagine someone takes a hard plastic object and starts poking them. Repeatedly.
When I get my tubes tied, I want to have "DO NOT POKE" carved on my ovaries in a way that an ultrasound can read.
I didn't realize just how much it hurt until I noticed that my eyes were watering. I *never* do that.
She finally located it, got a few pictures, and I was all done. Back into my clothes and I was out on the street, heading for work. I declined to take the bus downtown, seeing as it was a nice sunny day out and it's all downhill to where I needed to catch the bus for work.
I'm still kinda tender. But I have no dangerously large cysts, which is always good to know.
Um. Yay, or something.
My name is Kris, and today I had my first pelvic ultrasound.And got kicked in the nuts in the bargain.
Funny old world, eh?
