Well, 32 days, if we're being precise. But we're not, so fuck it.
Before I begin, a biology lesson for you: The human vagina, in addition to being self-cleaning, is something of an ecosystem. Much like your skin or your gut, there is a certain amount of good bacteria. There is also a certain amount of good yeast. These two things coexist in a balance that can be affected by any number of variables. If there is an overgrowth of bacteria (or somehow the yeast gets killed off), a person with a vagina can develop bacterial vaginosis, which has has some unpleasant symptoms (like off-colored discharge, odor, itching, and burning when you pee). This can also be caused by douching or just plain overuse of the vagina.
Oral (or intravenous) antibiotics for other infections will also kill off some of the bacteria in the vagina, which can lead to a yeast infection (called thrush in some areas of the world). Symptoms are similar to BV (odorless-but-abnormal discharge, itching, swelling, pain during sex and/or urination, to name a few). Uncontrolled diabetes, an impaired immune system, and hormone fluctuations can all lead to yeast infections. Some people will get a yeast infection immediately before menstruating. Regularly.
Developing either BV or a yeast infection does not mean that a person is dirty, "slutty", or anything else. It indicates a pH imbalance, or perhaps an underlying illness. If you think you have one of these issues, please seek medical care, and if anyone gives you shit, just drop me their name and address.
For legal reasons, I must state that you should not provide me the name and/or address of anyone giving you shit for normal biological functions. If you decide to do so anyway, also for legal reasons, I must state that the person in question will receive nothing worse than a medical pamphlet and a strongly worded letter indicating that they need to learn more about biology.
I saw my doctor today. It wasn't a "normal" post-surgical follow-up. Last week, I started to feel like I was getting a yeast infection. I won't go into details of symptoms, but they were mild. As I recalled after making the appointment, when I was on oral birth control (Seasonique? Seasonale? IDK, one of those shits that only gives you 4 periods a year), I used to get a yeast infection for like, a day before getting my period. They almost always went away on their own and were very rarely bad enough to merit a doctor's visit, or even so much as OTC treatment. Under normal circumstances, I would have probably ignored it completely, and if symptoms persisted for more than a day, started off with RepHresh (a specially-designed, vagina-safe product indicated to help balance vaginal pH and gently treat normally-occurring bouts of BV and/or thrush). Luckily, all symptoms stopped on their own, but I still decided to keep the appointment. I did just have surgery, after all, and I wanted to make sure that if I did have some type of infection, it didn't do any damage.
Fortunately, the doctor agrees that it appears that whatever I had is cleared up. He did take a culture just to be safe, but "everything looks really good". He is pleased with how I'm healing, and if I did have an infection (and not just a bad day), it didn't do any damage. He agrees that coming in was the right call as a precaution, but ultimately, it probably wasn't strictly necessary.
But so, um, here's a mortifying thing. Normally, when doing a culture/scraping/pap smear, the swab/brush gets swirled all up on the cervix. There is a myth that the cervix doesn't have any nerves (IT ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DOES, James). It does. For sure. I would argue, however, that the cervix is less sensitive than other parts of the anatomy, and it certainly doesn't react the same way to stimulation as those parts. Generally, when being swabbed, the cervix doesn't experience pain. (We are referring EXCLUSIVELY to swabbing here. Not brushing, scraping, biopsying, or any other procedure. Just wiping it with an oversized q-tip.) Pressure, sure, maybe a little discomfort depending on where the swabbing is occurring, but not pain. It's ideal to swab the cervix. But uh...I don't have one of those any more. So the swabbing was taking place on or around the vaginal cuff...which we have discussed previously is just the top part of the vagina sewn up like an old-timey coin purse. So now I have another gripe about hysterectomy unpreparedness.
NOBODY FUCKING WARNED ME THAT CERTAIN THINGS MIGHT FEEL COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT AND NOT AT ALL AS ONE EXPECTS THEM TO FEEL.
I'm not going to say I was getting off on it or anything. But the sensation was decidedly not unpleasant, and I was very, very confused. Of course the speculum still sucked (and I imagine always will), but the swabbing was unexpected and had me a bit red in the face.
Once you've stopped laughing, I will remind you that I may have to wait until after the holidays to get the test results back, because, y'know, holidays. But the big takeaway is that everything is healing well and looks as it should. I'm going to go eat my body weight in ice cream to forget about today.
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