Did they teach you THIS in sex ed? AKA, all about my box.

This post is totally TMI. But I can't be the only one this has ever happened to, and I'd like someone to bitch with, if you're out there.

First, I feel like I should disclaim that to an outsider, my situation is quite admirable. I am always fresh and clean, and always usually keep the landing strip well-maintained. I suppose it's true that I’ve yet to vajazzle, but gotta save something for a marital dry spell, ya know? Anyway. Point is, it’s like an episode of Hoarders in my box. Looks like a respectable abode from the outside, with all hell breaking loose inside.

Surgery number one. 2004. (Which is how I always know what year Friends ended. I’m an awesome teammate at bar trivia, if you're ever lookin.) Drunk sexing with the ex-bf (actually, I’m pretty sure we were already broken up, but I went through a pathetic phase.) I feel like I’ve been stabbed through the abdomen with a pencil. Cue 6 hours of writhing on the kitchen floor in horror, drinking 12 juice boxes because I thought maybe I was just constipated (it hurt behind my butthole, seriously) while the douche just SLEPT. In my bed. I finally called my dad at 7am when I pulled myself onto the toilet and fainted. And fell off and hit my head on the bathtub.

So, emergency room, metal dildo liquid injection into my anus, MRI, an abdomen so full of blood I looked 6 months pregnant and it went ‘glug glug’ when I moved … it was a softball-sized ovarian cyst that had ruptured.

Surgery number two, 2005, when Jeff and I first started dating. Bartholin’s Gland Cyst – hold that thought.

Surgery number three, 2009. LEEP for pre-cancerous cells on my cervix. That one’s boring because it wasn’t an emergency and so far I don’t have cancer, so I’ll leave it alone. The thing to note is that THESE ARE THREE TOTALLY SEPARATE PARTS. Ovaries, cervix, Bartholin’s gland. Are all the suck. (The doctors tell me these things "shouldn't" affect my fertility, and I know they shouldn't, but seeing as the only way to know if I can get pregnant is to ... get pregnant, I really have no way of knowing.)

So, now it's 2010. I have another Bartholin’s Gland cyst. Bartholin’s glands: small glands on either side of the vaginal opening that produce arousal fluid. OR get plugged up somehow and swell to the size of a golf ball and hurt like a whore. BALLS! So I’ve been having a problem with pants and underwear for about 5 days now, but since most places I go require me to wear at least one of the two, I’ve been in hell.

Now, here is my dilemma. My doctor isn’t in the office until Wednesday, but I want to wait for her, because she’s awesome. My best friend is also a doctor. And also awesome, but she’s not my doctor. So we’re going to this party on Saturday night, and sitting around drinking wine and eating spin dip beforehand, and I’m rocking a dress with houses on it and blue tights. (That’s not important, I just wanted to set the scene of how hot-quirky I looked. Because that’s my favorite kind of hot.) And she says, well I could drain it. Just let me know and I’ll bring stuff home from the hospital tomorrow and just do it. It’s a really easy procedure.

And I just stared at her for probably 20 minutes, imagining how I'd feel laying spread-legged in front of her. Every time I thought I was fine with it, another side-eye snuck up onto my face.

Honestly, It was more that I felt bad making her stare into my box than that I was afraid of a scalpel/syringe/catheter combo in her living room. That’s a true friend, I think. She’s lucky. She tells me it doesn’t matter, that she’s seen hundreds of vaginas, that she’s already seen me naked. I’m sure both of those things are true.

We got drunk and I was like "Yeah! Let's do it! It will be a fun bonding experience, and free! YAY!!!"

Yeeeaaaaah ... I decided not to do it. Honestly, I did get over the fact that she’d have her hands on my box. It just came down to the fact that a fucking golf ball in my vagina isn’t worth a friendship, and I was afraid that if something WERE to go wrong, and we’d done this thing undocumented, that I’d basically either have to shell out a bunch of cash to get it fixed or, like, sue my best friend? I mean, I don’t really know how medical suits work but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be involved in one with my BFF.

But every hour that I’m counting down to farking Wednesday, I kinda wish I hadn’t erred on the side of caution.