CHAPTER 1
Being a Gynecologist
ALL WOMEN HAVE STRADDLED THE stirrups, but few have the opportunity to see things from the other side. My patient Lita always brought her boyfriend, who was fascinated with what went on between the stirrups. Lita would undress, lie on the examining table, and mount her feet into the padded pink stirrups. Her boyfriend would hustle over to where I was sitting between her legs on my rolling stool, eye-level with her coochie, and he would beg me to let him take a look.
I always deferred to Lita, who didn't seem bothered by having her boyfriend watch. He would pull up a chair, with his eyes glued to her crotch like he was watching the tie-breaking pass in the last minutes of the Superbowl. I would insert the speculum into her vagina, pull out my cytobrush and spatula to do her Pap smear, and he would sit behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder as I worked. He would pepper me with questions and even asked if he could pull out the speculum when I was done.
It always weirded me out a little bit. I mean, who wants their boyfriend getting all clinical on them? Don't you want him to think of sex, not speculums, when he's staring with rapt attention at your hooha? But this guy's fascination with what goes on between the stirrups is not uncommon.
When I was an OB/GYN resident, I briefly dated this baby-cakes of a boy, who we'll call Adonis, since I honestly can't remember his name. I'm pretty sure he was legal, but only barely, and when he and his buddies found out I was a gynecologist they were riveted. They made up a drinking game they called Gyno Guzzling in my honor. As the star of this game, I was supposed to tell gynecology stories, and every time I said the word vagina or speculum, they would drink. While the feminist in me found this game a tad offensive, the narcissist in me couldn't resist the attention, and a roomful of hunky college boys egged me on for hours, as I told story after story, until we were all hammered. Gyno Guzzling went something like this:
LISSA: So Jolene comes into the clinic and I'm about to do a Pap smear when the nurse says to me, “Oh, you gotta be careful when you go in there, you know. Jolene's vagina has teeth.”
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: So I'm thinking the nurse means she's got chops, like her vagina’s got bite.
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: So I go about my business, but when I pull out my speculum …
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: I find Jolene's va jay jay stuffed with those plastic teeth you wear when you're pretending to be a vampire on Halloween.
BOYS: No way!
LISSA: Yes, way!
BOYS: More! More!
LISSA (COYLY, BATTING EYES): Well, okay. So the ER calls and says, “We've got a lady with purple pee. Can you come see her?” So I take a look at the pee and, sure enough, it's as purple as Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
ADONIS: What's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
LISSA (SIGHING, THINKING, I'VE GOTTA DATE OLDER GUYS): Never mind, sweetie. Anyway, I ask her, “Did you eat anything unusual? Have you had purple pee in the past?” And she shakes her head. I say, “You put anything purple up your vagina?”
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: And she says, “No, ma'am. I ain't.” So finally, I stick a speculum in there …
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: And her vagina is filled with this skanky, gelatinous purple goo.
BOYS: Eeeeee www … . Drink!
LISSA: So I scoop some out with my glove and show it to her, and say, “Then what's this?” And she says, “Oh, that. Well, my mammy told me I should always use jelly when the boys put on them condoms, so I do what my mammy says and use Welch's.”
BOYS: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha …
ADONIS (LOOKING MORE GOD-LIKE THAN EVER): One more, Lissa? Please?
LISSA (THINKING, “ANYTHING FOR YOU, GORGEOUS!”):
Okay. So I'm examining this woman with a plastic speculum …
BOYS: Drink!
LISSA: And she asks me if she can take home the speculum so she can look for her G-spot!
BOYS: Drink!
ADONIS: You must get some great pickup lines when guys find out you're a gynecologist. What's the best one?
LISSA: You mean what's the worst? “Will you be my doctor?”
ADONIS: What do you say?
LISSA (GRINNING): I don't do men. That one always shuts them up.
So if you're curious what it's like to be a gynecologist, you're not alone. When I go to dinner parties with people I don't know well, the conversation invariably winds up going down there. Gynecologists evoke a sort of morbid fascination from others, much as morticians must. Like a rubbernecker at a gruesome car wreck on the highway, you can't help being fascinated.
Really, we gynecologists are not so different from accountants, lawyers, car mechanics, or firemen. We all just focus on what we do best. What sets us apart is that what we know best happens to be what makes the world go round.
Why in the world would anyone ever want to be a gynecologist?
I know what you're thinking. We spend all day looking at naked women, so we must be a bunch of perverts, right? Does a woman do it because she's a closeted lesbo? Does a man do it because he's a sex fiend? But it's not like that. I swear. Nobody chooses this field because we get to stare at naked ladies all day long.
My call to medicine came early. I was only seven when I first started nurturing injured baby squirrels back to health, feeding them dog's milk with an eye dropper every two hours throughout long nights. Plus, my father was a doctor, so I grew up in hospitals. By the time I was twelve, I scrubbed in on my first surgery, a hysterectomy performed by one of my dad's friends, who graciously let me, little punk that I was, don a pair of surgical scrubs and stand back with the anesthesiologist with my washed and gloved hands. When the uterus came out, the surgeon handed me the rose-colored chunk of bloodied tissue and said, “The uterus.”
I held it in my gloved hands, with a mixed feeling of repulsion and pride, and when we did rounds on the patient later that night I blurted out, “I held your uterus!” She looked at me like I was the fungus on a moldy piece of pizza, but I bragged about it for weeks at school, as if it was something I did every day.
“Oh yeah. I had to do surgery on Friday. Just a uterus. Not heart surgery or anything.” So I guess gynecology coursed through my veins early on.
By the time I was a twenty- two-year-old medical student, I decided I would be an ophthalmologist, mostly because every doctor I met tried to talk me out of becoming an OB/GYN. “Terrible hours. No life. Crazy malpractice.” The rant rang in my ears. But once I jumped in during my first clinical rotation in labor and delivery, there was no turning back. I became a junkie, and labor and delivery was my drug.
While I loved the adrenaline-pumped hustle of labor and delivery, what attracted me most was that I cared deeply about women and the issues we face. My chosen field is not about vaginas. It's about people. Even after all these years, I sit in awe of the beauty within each woman. Am I vagina obsessed? Well, I'm writing this book right now, so maybe. But really, being a gynecologist is about loving, empowering, and embracing women. Vaginas are secondary. They just happen to need a little TLC from time to time.
Doesn't it gross you out to look at skanky...