It’s Just An Examination

Take everything off and put this on. 

Put your feet in the stirrups. 

You’re going to have to scooch down. 

Spread your legs. 

You are going to have to spread them further. 

Relax. 

You may feel some pressure. 

Don’t tense up. 

This will only take a few minutes. 

A stranger’s hand. 

A body that doesn’t want to be touched. 

A cold room. 

A paper sheet. 

My eyes fixed on the ceiling. 

A mind that has already left the room. 

Don’t worry. 

It’s almost over. 

You can get dressed now. 

I ask for something to clean myself up. 

It’s just an examination.

So why do I feel so dirty?

△ △ △

Author’s Note

Writing has always been one of the ways I make sense of things. Recently, I’ve been relying on it heavily to work through a health matter.

I’ve spent months navigating a medical situation that has left me physically uncomfortable, emotionally exhausted, and increasingly powerless. Surgery appears inevitable. I want this cyst removed, not monitored indefinitely while I wait for it to grow larger or potentially cause a complication. But getting there has meant conflicting opinions, repeated examinations, insurance questions, unanswered calls, and an extraordinary amount of waiting.

I’ve had to change how I move through the world, quite literally, while trying to find a way forward.

The system has never particularly worked for me. And people, if I’m being candid, have been among the greatest disappointments of my life. Yet here I am, with little choice but to place my faith in both.

I’m doing everything I know how to do. Researching. Asking questions. Advocating for myself. Following up. Using every tool I’ve acquired over a lifetime of learning how to manage things on my own.

But this isn’t something I can solve through determination or resourcefulness.

I need other people to do their jobs. I need systems to function. I need answers, cooperation, and ultimately, medical care.

Having to trust what I don’t particularly trust is disheartening enough.

Then there are the examinations.

I understand their medical purpose. That doesn’t make them any less intimate, invasive, or distressing to me. Particularly when I’m already feeling vulnerable, and each encounter seems to bring another opinion rather than a resolution.

I initially wrote more than 3,500 words trying to make sense of the uncertainty, the bureaucracy, the frustration, and the growing sense that my body, my time, and my choices were no longer entirely my own.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized that the examinations themselves had become a particularly painful expression of something much larger.

Eventually, I found myself returning to these few lines.