Malignant Medicine

*Trigger warning: This story recounts an incident of medical trauma. If you find this topic upsetting, please be kind to yourself and skip this story or seek support, if needed.

I’m sitting on the edge of a table. My pants are off. A thin piece of paper lies, slightly torn, across my lap. The door opens abruptly with a screech to my right, and I see your clogs fill the space below the curtain as you step into the room. You pull back the taupe fabric in a rush, making the rings howl along the rod, and our eyes meet for the first time. You quickly find your chair, state your name, ask me why I’m here.

“Follow up on a fourth degree tear,” I say.

“How did that happen?”

Confused by your question, I pause: are you asking to hear the tender parts of my story, or is there a hint of mock and blame in your question?

Instead, I answer simply.

“Giving birth to my son six months ago.”

We cover the basics: 67 hours of labor; 42 weeks and 1 day; 8 lb. 6 oz. baby; vacuum delivery. I can see in your eyes that you’ve already reached a conclusion, as if I am a case study from one of your textbooks rather than an exhausted mother who is pushing through sharp, debilitating pain so that I can rock and hold and play with my baby boy.

Immune to my suffering, you tell me to lie back and put my legs in the stirrups. Before I am fully still, your fingers are touching me, and I jump.

“Does this hurt?”

“I’m just a little guarded. I have an injury, and I can’t see what you’re doing.”

You grab a q-tip — this much you tell me — and then you begin to poke around, asking me what hurts, what doesn’t, as my body jumps at your jerky movements. I desperately want to ask you to walk me through what you are doing, to request my consent before inserting anything else.

But my voice is tired.

As I dig deep for strength and for words, you jam a plastic object into me and start to scrape my insides. It’s all I can do not to cry, so I stay silent, as you continue to ask why I keep jumping at your touch.

You tell me you need to do a rectal exam, and before I’ve said a word, you insert your finger into my butt and poke around stiffly for a few seconds. Satisfied, you remove your digit and tell me I can sit up.

“You’ve healed well. Most women with your injury feel fine by now. I can prescribe you Gabapentin, but you’ll need to stop breastfeeding.”

My response is stuck in my throat. Breastfeeding is the only thing I’ve been able to do for my son, without pain, since he was born.

“Do you want to have more kids? It will have to be a cesarean.”

“I know cesarean is recommended and I know that there are risks, but could I choose to try for a vaginal delivery again?”

You smirk.

“You can choose what you want, but you are at high risk for tearing again. Another vaginal delivery could leave you with lifelong fecal incontinence. Anything else?”

“No, I think that’s it,” I swallow.

“Come back and see me when you’re pregnant.”

I get to my car and let it release: the suffocation of not using my voice, the anger at a doctor speaking absolutes over my story, the disgust over another stranger’s hands inside my injured body. I sit in the parking garage and release tears of longing for healing, only to have spent $30 and lost an hour of work time to be traumatized by a fractured medical system.

This story was published in Substack. View the original story here.