you uterus, you!

*Warning: This post contains many run-on and/or structurally questionable sentences. Sorry. I normally would fix that, but there are just too many. Also, I don't really feel like it. So, sorry if you get a little carsick. Thanks.*


I have a small beef to air. A minor complaint. It has to do with my uterus and associated organs. I hope you're all okay with that, and I think you are, otherwise you mightn't have made it past the keeper post. Anyway:

I learned at my last gynecological visit that I have a tipped uterus- meaning that instead of standing up fairly straight and leaning slightly towards my stomach like a normal uterus, it tips backwards towards my back. My first thought was- well gee, that's neat. A little weird. It occurs in about 20% of the female population so it's a little rare, but not that much.

My second thought was this- I'm 24. I've seen the gyno since I was 17. Why am I just learning this now? Did my other doctors (one woman and two men) not notice (I doubt that, they get pretty far up in there, for those that don't know) or did they simply feel it irrelevant, unnecessary to mention? Did they think I didn't need to know this? *Did* I in fact, need to know this? I think so, and here's why:

I decided to do a little quick research, a la the internet. Now I'll be the first to tell you that the democratization of information via the web has its downfalls. One of these is, of course, the phenomenon of people doing a small amount of research on a subject from an unreliable source (putting it politely) and then proceeding to spread such (mis)information like dogma straight from the angel Gabriel's mouth. We've all seen it-the 'modern asshole' as I heard once from an author I can't recall. I do, however, think that I can get a little basic medical information and trust it.

The first site I checked http://www.inletmedical.org/ stated that the two most frequent symptoms associated with a tipped uterus were pain during intercourse (check) and painful periods (check). However, these symptoms are both fairly generic and pain during sex can be caused by many different things. Most women report some pain during menstruation as well, but before I went on the pill (which is well documented to reduce pain and cramping) I used to have cramps so bad they would wake me at night and make me nauseous. Not kidding. So this struck a chord with me.

Other symptoms listed that I had suffered (but were incredibly generic) : lower back pain and pain/difficulty using tampons. The tampon issue is not so generic; I always found them problematic. The first time I used a tampon I laid on my bed and cursed my newfound womanhood and limped across the room until mom made me take it out. Obviously I learned better how to use them later, but still- I know no one else who experienced that.

However, this particular sight was also kind of promoting the 'Uplift' procedure where they lift the uterus to it's 'proper position' to alleviate some of these symptoms. Given the generality of symptoms, I felt a little suspicious of this site so I kept looking. Also just because it's not always positioned this way doesn't mean it is necessarily some kind of medical problem that needs fixing. It might just explain a few things.

So, next I checked out http://www.womens-health.co.uk/retrover.asp and found an identical list of symptoms. This made me feel a bit more confident that my information was accurate. I could keep looking, but my point is that when I complained of pain with tampons to my doctor I was told that I must be using them wrong, because they aren't painful. And when I complained of pain during intercourse I was told that I needed to relax and that the problem was basically in my head. What the fuck? When I complained of cramps making me nauseous, again, this was never mentioned. I was told to take an OTC pain reliever and try to ignore it.

Now obviously there isn't a whole lot that I could have done, had I know that I have a tipped uterus, but it would have at least relieved some of the frustration that I felt when dealing with the aforementioned symptoms. Knowing that it was a genetic thing, and that it was not something to worry about, but that it may cause some of these symptoms might have at least saved me the internal stress about whether I was somehow doing something wrong, I was too uptight, I was imagining my extremely painful cramps and otherwise creating things in my head etc.

Seriously. Do our doctors see so many stupid people that they don't even bother to educate their patients anymore? Or do they think we don't need to know any of this information if we can't do anything about it? I did have a gynecologist pepper me with questions about my sexual (in)activity at age 17 (apparently it was really hard to believe that a girl could get through high school without having sex; I was told "Look, I see 14 year olds that are pregnant who say *they* aren't having sex. You can tell me the truth")I could see how a doctor might think that it's not worth potentially giving a neurotic patient an opportunity to create a complex ('I'm so afflicted, I have a tilted uterus'), but I hardly think I fit that profile.

Anyway. That is my beef. It's pretty minor and relatively unimportant, but hey, it's my blog. I'm grateful to have access to good healthcare and doctors that take care of me, even if they don't take the time to discuss the nuances of every scenario with every patient. After all, I suppose they have all kinds of people with terrible problems to deal with, so the fact that my uterus was tilted didn't even blip on their radar. (She's not pregnant, no STD's, healthy weight- good to go! Now where'd that crack addict go?)

Oh, the only other thing was that it's been thought to contribute on occasion to infertility, but sources seem to vary on this. Some say that women with endometriosis can develop a tilted uterus as a side effect (or that it can happen after childbirth) and that the ensuing infertility can be mistakenly attributed to it (the tilted-ness). So-I'm not terribly worried about that. But you'd think they'd have mentioned it sometime in the first 7 years of exams.