Girl (parts) on Fire

Sometimes things happen to me and then something like this happens in my head:

“I should blog this.”

“Oh my god, Miranda! No! This is embarrassing! Don’t!”

“No, really, this is too good. I should blog this.”

And on and on until eventually the mood has passed and it’s just no longer relevant. But then this thing happened that is too hilarious, if not awkward, not to share.

So what the hell, right? YOLO or something like that.

Fair warning, though, if you’re easily offended by vaginas or talking about vaginas, or if you’re of the opposite sex and have a fondness for vaginas, you might want to go ahead and mark this one as read.

Though if you’re in that latter category, perhaps reading this will give you a certain amount of sympathy for the “fairer” sex, so if you’re in need of a dose of that, I invite you to stay.

In case you’re new here, I gave birth six months ago. And what sometimes happens when a human attempts to Houdini its way out of the Magic Box is that the box is left, how shall I say this delicately, torn open from tip to tail.

Which is what happened to me.

Third degree tears are no joke, y’all.

But mine healed up nicely, and within about a week after having Emma, things felt as normalish down there as they ever will again.

So color me shocked when I went to the bathroom one day a few weeks back and upon wiping experienced a pain that felt like a million tiny daggers had just been jabbed into my junk.

It was, in a word, unpleasant.

It was so unpleasant, in fact, that I did what any self-respecting woman aware of her own anatomy does.

I dropped trow, grabbed a mirror, put my leg on the toilet and took a little look-see.

There, dangling from my baby maker, was something I can only describe as what looked to be truck balls.

They definitely weren’t there before Emma. And they definitely didn’t belong there. Ever.

I turned to Google. I turned to nurse friends. I turned to more Google. And then I called my doctor.

“Um, hi, I need to see the doctor. I’m having a…um…well…there’s…uh…”

For three weeks, I lived with this extra appendage. I checked periodically to see if my Scar Tissue Issue had magically disappeared so I could save myself the copay and the drive and the mortification, but no.

No, I did not have that much good fortune squirreled away in Karma Bank and Trust. So yesterday I loaded up my littlest and made the drive to my OB’s office.

Once I was finally called back and on the table, underwear safely stowed inside my diaper bag—which, why do we do that? We’re about to have a light shined on our lady bits and we’re afraid the doctor will see our underwear??? I’m not alone, right?—anyway, while I waited for the doctor, I imagined all the things that might be going on down there. Again. Just like I’d been doing for three weeks.

Finally, the doctor came in. I told him about my extra pieces and he told me to put my feet into the stirrups.

He declared my Scar Tissue Issue to be a “granulation.” Then he told the nurse to get a tray.

She returned with a small vial of something in her hand and I thought, “Oh! Hooray! Vagicaine! NUMB ME UP!!”

And I thought that’s what he did.

Except, no. No, that’s not what happened at all.

I felt a pinch and a burning and sucked in my breath in that way reserved for the sharpest of sharp pains where you physically cannot exhale and every muscle in your body tenses and heard him say “Well, I just got the largest piece of it.”

People.

I did not see any sort of sharp implement for cutting or slicing or clipping.

I think he removed a piece of my vagina with a yank and twist. Which is not at all like a bend and snap.

It was at this point that the nurse reminded me to breathe and started asking questions about Emma, who was chilling in the car seat, chewing on my disgusting keys while my doctor was wrist deep in my business, to distract me.

The doctor went on poking and prodding and saying inane things like “usually sex takes care of these” and “I need you to be as loose as possible right now.”

To which I replied, in my head, “Doc, it hurts to wipe. What makes you think sex is on my radar?” and to which the nurse replied, out loud, “Doc, you say that like it’s easy to do” and I high-fived her with my mind.

As a friend pointed out, only a man would say that sex fixes painfully broken vaginas. Menfolk who are reading? Sex does not fix painfully broken vaginas.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, to take care of any remaining bonus tissue hiding in my nethers, he busted out a bottle of Silver Nitrate and swabbed me up. For good measure.

I’ll say that again in case you didn’t read it the first time: Silver Nitrate. In my vagina.

My girl parts were set on fire yesterday and not in a way that was even sort of good.

He went on to tell me that they’d done a really great job in creating my Frankengina in the hour after Emma’s birth and things looked great everywhere else. (And I do mean everywhere.)

I guess I should’ve known there would maybe be issues down the road when it took three times as long to put me back together as it did to get her out, but whatever. I was all high on endorphins and adrenaline oxytocin and not thinking clearly.

Now can someone please pass me a peri bottle? Or a bottle of sauv blanc?