Warning! Gynaecology!

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.

I’ve never been one of those naked ladies in the swimming-pool changing rooms, enthusiastically towelling my crotch while discussing how best to grow organic runner beans with that nice lady from the wholefoods shop. The thought of being undressed in front of people fills me with horror. I’m just not that sort of girl.

Which would go some way towards explaining why my visit to the Family Planning* clinic today is something I have been putting off for over a year. I have an IUD, you see, and since the Other Half had his balls cut off** last year, we decided I might as well go wireless. But, you see, I hate all that fiddling around stuff. I hate standing around uncomfortably, naked from the waist down, waiting for the doctor to finish putting their gloves on/dipping the speculum in freezing water/switching on the secret webcam hidden in that box of tongue depressors***. I hate when someone shines an anglepoise lamp up my hoo-ha. I hate making polite conversation with someone who is locating my cervix. Urk.

But I went. And, predictably, it was embarrassing and uncomfortable and cold and a little bit painful. On the plus side, the doctor did say she liked my shoes (pink slingbacks which match my hair – I rule!), which is probably one of the nicer things a person can hear while someone is fiddling with their insides****. So it wasn’t all bad. But I did wonder to myself, even as I was thanking the doctor (for what?? Not punching me in the face to compound my misery? Not legging it through the waiting room shouting about my downstairs? Not pulling the bed-curtain-thing back with a triumphant “TA DA!!!” to reveal all my ex-boyfriends?), what sort of person chooses a career based in, well, fannying around with fannies. Rather her than me, that’s all I can say. I can barely communicate with people face-to-face, let alone strike up a casual conversation over a nice warm foo-foo.

There. Aren’t you glad I shared? I know I am.

* I know, I know – it makes me sound like I read Woman’s Realm and bake my own tea cosies. But the only alternative is “Sexual Health Clinic” and just being in the place makes me want to wear a badge saying “I Don’t Have An STI” so I’m really not that comfortable with it. Shut up.

** Well, not really. But he was a brave boy and he had to shave his minge off and poke his balls through a hole in a green sheet so we like to make it sound more, you know, extreme than it actually was by way of compensation.

*** Randomly, when I used to type up medical reports for the kids at my last job, I could always vaguely taste tongue depressors. Does that count as synaesthesia*****? Or am I just a bit odd?

**** I have just realised that this sentence makes me sound a) retarded and b) like the sort of person who clambers onto examining tables naked but for their shoes. I am neither. Honest.

***** As another random aside, some noises have shapes. Honest. Like the noise off of Family Fortunes – not the uh-uh noise (that noise is orange) – the noise they make in the last round with the quick-fire questions – if you give the same answer as the person who went before you they play a sort of “poomph” noise. Which is oval. Well, more elliptical. And the colour of purple grape juice. I’ll stop now.