Rape. Yes. It is.
Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of a gynecological exam through the lens of sexual assault.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Well, I promptly failed my renewed attempt to write every day. But in keeping with my trying to be more compassionate, I’m going to say there were some extenuating circumstances and forcing myself to write would have been… lacking in compassion.
For 8 weeks now I’ve been bleeding – like the world’s longest period, except, thankfully, without cramps or mood swings… just blood. A lot of blood. Day and night. For 8 weeks.
Last weekend I landed in the emergency room because I was short of breath, having rapid heart beat, and my mouth was dry.
I was anemic and dehydrated from blood loss – like I literally had lost enough blood volume to dehydrate me (isn’t that kinda freaky?) So they pushed an IV of fluids and drew blood and I managed to escape without a blood transfusion because, though I’m anemic, my body is still managing to crank out new red blood cells, and they’re still healthy, at least, they were as of last weekend. They did a new blood test on Friday. We’ll see what that shows.
In the ER they said I absolutely must have a GYN appointment immediately to get an endometrial biopsy and a transvaginal ultrasound.
As a person with… multiple… complex sexual assault traumas and literal physical sexual assault injuries… this was not welcome news.
I haven’t been burying my head in the sand. I’ve been working towards getting a GYN exam. I worked up to it once before, in my twenties, did a ton of therapy, researched and asked around for the best women’s clinic in my town with good experience handling assault survivors, etc… It went horrifically wrong.
I explained to the doctor (when I was in my 20s) that any penetration was excruciatingly painful. That I couldn’t even wear tampons. That penetrative sex of any kind was completely off the table, and that I’d really like to know if I had some kind of physical cause for this, or if it was a psychological/emotional issue, and how I could treat it so that I could have a normal life…
Her response – well, sex isn’t everything.
Seriously.
I wasn’t enough of a self-advocate to walk out of the office right then and there, though I wish I had.
She then had me undress and get on the table and showed me the speculum (not a child’s one as I later found out exist, an adult one. Not a small-size adult one, aa I later found out exist, but a regular one…)Â Her comment, “See, it’s not that much bigger than a normal penis, nothing to be afraid of…”
Fucking bitch.
She shoved it into me and proceeded to wrench it back and forth for a solid three minutes trying to get my cervix to “get in the right position.” I was biting into my lip, had both hands pressed over my mouth to smother the screams that I was trying to choke down into my chest. Tears were flooding into my ears and onto the table beneath me.
She finally, apparently, got it in position to do a Pap test. Then discovered that her efforts had resulted in significant bleeding and she said, “Oh dear, we’ll probably have to do this again, there’s a lot of blood in this. But we’ll send it in anyway, just in case.”
She took out the speculum and did a bimanual exam, which she hadn’t told me about so I wasn’t expecting. She shoved two fingers inside of me and pressed them up against my belly from the inside trying to make them meet her fingers pressing down from the outside. My uterus didn’t like that and I instantly went into the worst cramps I’d had in my life (and I have horrific cramps every month on my own.)
At some point during this I realized I tasted blood… my mouth was filling up with it. I thought I’d bitten my hand because, I realized, somehow the meat at the base of my thumb had become a gag, but through the smear of blood when I pulled it away from my face, I couldn’t see any broken skin.
The doctor came up to my head, in clear view of my, plainly, bloody face and had me raise my arms to do a breast exam.
She said nothing about my tears, or the blood all over my face and hands.
When she was done, she asked if I’d like a pad, since I had “a little blood down there…” I nodded, beyond speaking, and she left me in the room alone.
I curled up on my side on the table, around my cramping belly and my coppery mouth and sobbed. I was still sobbing when she came back. She set the pad on her chair and said I should get dressed because someone was going to come in and see about my lip.
I managed to be clothed when the person came in. I don’t remember them much, I think I’d dissociated at that point. I had rediscovered the skill of my childhood – escaping into a hidden place deep inside of myself where everything on the outside was just a distant haze – my personality on a kind of autopilot that I didn’t have to supervise.
I know that person put some stitches in my lip because I remember playing with them with my tongue for a week. I remember risking pulling my lip down to see them in the mirror and being deeply unsettled by the black thread interwoven with my flesh.
I remember going to my therapist after the appointment (we’d planned that because we anticipated it would be traumatic). I remember being cheerful, making jokes, telling her I was surprised at how well I was doing… How glad I was it was over… How empowered I felt by going through it…
I remember the uncontrollable tremors in my hands, my arms, my chest, my belly – as if I were cold and couldn’t stop shivering… all while I smiled and joked.
I don’t remember going home.
I remember calling my boyfriend and sobbing to him. He was angry. With me. Why didn’t I stop her? Why didn’t I tell her it hurt? If someone was hurting HIM, HE would have told them to fucking well stop!”
When they told me I had to go back for a new Pap, that the blood had obscured the last too thoroughly…Â I didn’t tell him.
I don’t remember if I told my therapist.
I remember going back to the office… alone.
I remember going back into the exam room… alone.
I remember the same doctor coming back in again. Giving some excuse about how it was because of my “tilted cervix” that she couldn’t place the speculum properly.
Timidly, I told her that it had been terribly painful, that I didn’t know if I could do it again. I asked if it was possible that I had some scarring or something that could be making it more painful for me than the average patient (carefully wording it to put the blame on some abnormality of myself – not antagonize her…)
She brusquely said she hadn’t noticed any scars and told me to undress.
I did.
I should have walked out.
But I was in a twilight world where self-agency no longer existed.
I took off my clothes. I crawled on to the table. I exposed myself and I started to cry.
I don’t remember much of the second exam – bits of odd observations – a memory of the corner of the fluorescent light panel in the ceiling… the clank of metal…Â the smell of blood…
After several attempts she left the office to get another doctor. I was left exposed and bleeding and shivering on the table. I remember thinking nothing. Empty. Hollow.
Two new women came in with the original doctor. All of them looking at my nakedness. Only one of them spoke to me – she introduced herself and she spoke kindly, but I can’t remember her words, except she had worked at Planned Parenthood… she had worked with rape survivors… she would use a child-sized speculum.
I don’t remember it going in, only a vague, distant relief that it wasn’t as painful as before.
The other nurse came forward and held my hand and said comforting things to me, but I didn’t hear her. Except I remember her telling me to breathe… and blink… concerned… then putting drops in my eyes.
The new doctor helped me get dressed. She helped me get to the waiting room. She had me sit, gave me water, asked who she could call to drive me home. I remember the paneling on the reception desk, the potted plant, the water cooler, the pine trees outside the glass front doors.
I must have told her there was no one to get me, that I’d driven myself. I don’t remember, but they didn’t call anyone, though she asked me to stay in the lobby for an hour. The receptionist and a nurse asking several times if I needed anything, if I was dizzy, if I needed to lie down again.
I remember deciding I needed to convince them I could get myself home… emerging from my hiding place enough to push the autopilot into place. I retreated again, allowing it to begin to give tentative smiles and respond in longer phrases until, finally, they let me go when I said I was ready.
I don’t remember going home.
I had to go back a third time because the second sample had come back abnormal, though they weren’t sure if that was due to the fact that it was also contaminated with blood – and my cervix had sustained repeated trauma in the gaining of the sample.
I don’t remember my third visit, except the kind doctor did the exam. She said I didn’t have any STDs (she called them “nasties”). She gave me a prescription for acid I had to apply to my own cervix for two weeks to “burn off the abnormal cells.”
She ordered an ultrasound.
I followed her directions. I used the acid. I got the ultrasound. And then I never went back.
This week I was forced, in my mind, by my circumstances, to repeat that experience.
I described it to several people as being raped again.
A conversation evolved about whether it is really “rape” or if it only feels that way in my head.
But here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter.
This isn’t about bringing charges. This isn’t about police or courts or legal definitions.
This is about me. My experience. My expertise in being raped – because I’ve done it so many times now.
And what was done to me in that office, by that first doctor – it hit all of the criteria that I need to call it an assault.
But it wasn’t sexual! – Rape isn’t sexual, it’s about power and control. The doctor exercised her power and control over me through her position to cause me physical and emotional pain and trauma.
But you consented! – I complied to a person I perceived as having authority over me. I also complied to the men who held a gun to my head and told me to strip. Compliance is not consent.
But the doctor was just doing her job! – No. She wasn’t. She was failing at her job. Doctors swear an oath. One of the promises they make is this… “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.” This doctor performed her task with complete indifference to my pain, my suffering, and my misery. She CREATED injury and took no responsibility for doing so.
Additionally, she did not have the skills to do the task at hand and continued despite this fact. In that, she failed another of her oaths… “I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.” She pursued her own purpose with indifference to the pain, suffering, misery, and literal physical and psychological harm it inflicted on me.
The man who molested me didn’t particularly care about hurting me, he wasn’t specifically a sadist. But in pursuing his own goals, he was indifferent to the pain, suffering, misery, and harm he caused me, just like she was.
Not all assault is sadistic. Sometimes it is simply indifferent disregard for the consequences of meeting one’s own goals.
The frightening part is… when it’s a doctor… we are quick to claim they’re performing a greater good. We’re quick to say, “Oh, but they were trying to help you…” We differentiate assault not by the actual acts committed but by the authority we deem the person acting to have in committing those acts. We differentiate assault by the perceived intention of the person committing it.
Authority and intention.
So if you have a medical degree and your intention is to get through this patient and on to your next so you can get done early, or so you can earn more money… well, then… you’re just being a doctor – regardless of the harm you leave in your wake.
But if you’re driving through a school zone at 80 miles per hour to get to your next client, to pack more meetings into your day, to increase your income… and you harm a child… it’s depraved indifference.
For me… on that table… legalities didn’t matter.
I was raped. Like I’d been before. Over and over again in my life. Sadistic or indifferent. Dirty jeans or white coat. Different flavors of the same poison.
It was rape.
And then they tell me, 20 years later, to do it all again.
Compliance is not consent.
It is 20 years later, and, again I have submitted to assault without consenting. I am not psychologically capable of consent under these circumstances. I am capable only of compliance.
It doesn’t matter that a doctor is doing it.
It doesn’t make a difference to my experience.
I do not consent.
In psychological and emotional impact… it is rape.
Again.
2 Comments
Sully Holt
Of course it is rape. God ! I can’t believe they did that to you. That is the worst thing I ever heard and it made my cry. And makes me wonder how doctors can act like that. I’m so sorry. But it’s a good thing that you actually talk about that here and put words on such emotional, ugly experiences. I’m fully supporting you with all my heart, even from the other side of the world. Sully
Shadow
Thank you, Sully. I appreciate your support, even from the other side of the world. 🙂 It did help to write about this… it’s been a mostly hidden trauma for about fifteen years now, and… it probably needed some airing. I appreciate you being willing to witness me.