My girlfriend was looking to get a new IUD after her last one was expiring. For some reason the normal approach is completely without anaesthesia. There are so many horror stories of women being in awful pain during and up to weeks after the procedure. She looked around for a gynecologist with a focus on contraception (most focus on conception which is kind of annoying if you’re not at that stage in life yet) and we were able to find one. He said there’s no reason to not be using local anaesthesia. The procedure was very simple. Unbelievable how many women are going through pain that would be entirely preventable.
It’s true. People are telling me in the comments that it’s painless, but having a device shoved into your cervix without anesthesia is terrible.
There’s probably some theory like “you can’t get proper patient feedback with anesthesia” or some such bullshit.
No medical consensus just decided based on a bunk study by Alfred Kinsey that, because only 5% of women could feel a “gentle stroke” to the cervix by a small probe, the cervix must be “the most completely insensitive part of the female anatomy” and not possess any nerve endings and therefore it must be fake when women complain about having any sensation there. Nevermind that the data in the study itself disproved its own conclusion and the 3 major nerve groups that are stimulated by the cervix.
Wait so if its local anesthesia does that men your girlfriend had an injection into her cervix directly?? Because the idea of that makes me want to scream.
Yes. But the alternative is to feel the IUD penetrate the cervix and then hook into the uterus. And if youre getting a replacement, like was the case for her, you get to go through all of that backwards beforehand as well. It makes a prick from a syringe (although painful) seem pretty good by comparison.
The place that put in my IUD wouldn’t even give me ibuprofen; I had to use my own. I went back the next day to take the horrid thing out.
I was amazed the first time I went to a gynecologist outside of planned parenthood. It didn’t hurt at all. I don’t blame them, they’re often brand new doctors under incredible time and budget constraints, but it does make a difference. I didn’t even go to an expensive gynecologist’s office, I went to the income-scaled local general clinic, but they get a lot more support from insurance and the state than PP.
I worked for the greatest gynecologist on the planet and supervised his pelvic exams. Never seen someone do such a good job.
Are there no female gynecologists?
You’d kinda need to be a female gynecological researcher w clout, and then maybe like 40 years after you demonstrate a need for a new technique, it might start to catch on.
I would imagine that tolerating the pain was beaten into women for so long that at this point it would be futile to try to change it because they would be shamed and seen as weak.
I mean we’re talking about humans, not Klingons
There was a documented case of a nurse stealing pain medication and injecting women with saline to cover for it and it took years for her to be caught because no one believed the women who said they were in pain. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html&ved=2ahUKEwi1n93Yip2FAxWONlkFHStzA7wQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw23_e6wsBLQ7jybQBvuJOvI
Personally I’ve had numerous cervical biopsies (as in they cut chunks out of you with the devil’s scissors) and the standard of care is no numbing agent or pain medication of any kind. The dr said to give a yell if I was going to faint bc that happens a lot. I asked why I couldn’t have something and they were like, ‘dunno. We just don’t do that’
I’m a guy, so forgive my ignorance for this question: could you not have requested it? And by request, I mean push until they agreed?
I did try, they were like ‘we don’t have anything here’ and then it was down to ‘soo do you want to keep this appointment or try again next month?’ And I had a sitter with the kid and had taken off work so I sucked it up. Like they always expect you to. The next time I went so far as to talk to another Dr in the practice but I kept being told over and over it wasn’t done and isn’t necessary. Definitely check out the podcast ‘the retrievals’ to learn more about how women’s pain is treated in ob/gyn
They won’t agree no matter how hard you push.
direct link without tracking garbage: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html
So b your logic, do you believe some minority cops means no institutionalised racism in policing?
I asked a question
I don’t believe for a second that you didn’t know there were female gynecologists. You were attempting to shift blame, not ask questions and engage in meaningful discourse.
I was making people question the original premise that a. No gynecological procedures involve sedation b. That this still occurs universally and contemporaneously and c. That male doctors somehow have exclusive and universal control over procedures and have denied sedation out of deliberate malfeasance.
You then tried to apply a false reading to an unrelated situation to create a false equivalency.
Your comment was as ludicrous as saying, “You don’t like chocolate ice cream? So what you’re saying is that you support the bombing of Palestine!!!”
If perhaps you explained yourself in the original comment, I would not have assumed incorrectly.
Your question doesn’t even fully cover point c, let alone a and b. I’m not psychic 🤷♀️
I didn’t have to, because it was a question. Your ridiculous response is on you, buddy 🤷♂️
You absolutely didn’t have to. And my response is absolutely on me. If your goal was to be ambiguous with your question, you achieved it. If your goal was to outline points a, b and c above, you did not succeed.
Anesthesia is pretty damn dangerous. There are a ton of modern Dentists abandoning the practice to Dental Surgeons.
That level of liability would kill Gynecology due to insurance.
I’m assuming you’re referring to the dangers of being “put under” right? Another commenter mentioned local anaesthetic… I don’t think dentists are shying away from that and it seems appropriate for these situations.
I’m not even sure local anesthetic would be possible in the way that you mean. Novocaine is used to target mapped nerve bundles to temporarily shut down about 1/8th of the jaw’s nervous systems. This isn’t really possible for the region in question due to overlapping nervous regions and the location of the nerve clusters. There are topical creams that could be used but this would just numb the skin and from accounts it sounds like most of the pain experienced is the result of muscular distress. Epidurals exist but this is still a pretty invasive and dangerous procedure for a routine checkup that may result in as much pain as it would relieve.
Frankly less physically invasive exploratory techniques such as fiber optic probes similar to those used in laparoscopic surgery would be a much safer, if more expensive and less thorough, option for those that experience distress.
err, not trying to be that guy, my girlfriend said that gynecology didn’t hurt, and she went to public health care here in brasil, so i think is just lack of competency, and USA health system?
I think you need to talk to more than one girl about that… really depends on the procedure, your sensitivity down there and the competence of the gynaecologist. I’ve been to appointments that were fine and I’ve been there near crying from pain…
true true didn’t think about that, the system need a way to report these cases where a painless procedure become pantiful because of incompetence, so the shit doctor learn how todo it properly or people start to avoid him/she
Mostly every experience I’ve heard has been a good one. This is from Finland.
Endometriosis is more common than people without vaginas realize and it often goes undiagnosed. My wife was gaslit about the pain of gyno procedures for two whole decades until the a doctor finally diagnosed her. A diagnosis which only came due a tubal ligation procedure forcing the doctors to physically see all the scar tissue inside her.
Yup, my wife has it and it AMAZING how many doctors are ignorant about it. We literally had one doctor tell her she “probably didn’t have that, because Endo is a very complicated disease and blah blah blah”. Nevermind all the symptoms lining up and the fact her GRANDMA HAD IT.
Went to a specialist surgeon focusing on it and he did a quick exam and was like “yep you have it, it felt like you have rocks in your vagina”. It was THAT obvious and yet no other fucking gyno she saw before that point noticed anything! Like doctors, please listen to your lady patients, PLEASE!
I always like when they say, “that’s rare so you don’t have that” (in regards to any potential diagnosis, really)
It’s like they forget that “rare” doesn’t mean “inexistent”
Yeah, it just reminds me that not every doctor aced med school… someone had to be bottom of the class (while still technically passing).
Sample size of 1. The point of this whole thread is that people don’t believe women when they say they are in pain. Obviously there are individual differences between patients, and differences in quality of care.
Your girlfriend is lucky. I’m a British woman. It hurts. How many other women need to post from how many countries to convince you?
My girlfriend (also British) always complained it hurt until we moved and she got a new gyno and said with the new one she barely felt a thing.
exactly that what i want to say, it don’t need to be painful and it’s the doctor fault. isn’t there a way to review these doctors, or alert others womans?, or they learn to do it properly or they start losing clients
That’s called selection bias my friend.
maybe, but from the answers look more like doctor stupidity than just certain woman being more sensitive or the exam be made literally to torture woman, not saying that the problem exist, but to fix it we need to blame correctly
I think we’re just conditioned to tolerate it. An episiotomy is a terrible thing.
I’m not conditioned to anything. I won’t argue I’m probably lucky but I’ve had 3 gynecologists in my life and routine examinations have been uncomfortable but have never hurt or made me cry.
It’s not uncommon for medical procedures to hurt btw. An episiotomy is a surgery, though, and where I’m from it’s always done with anesthesia. Could be a US thing to do it without. It’s also not a “terrible thing” but a sometimes necessary procedure that can greatly benefit a mother and child when giving birth
Edit: Just to be clear, though: There is definitely loads of stuff to criticize about gynecological procedures.
Edit 2: Also, calling out an episiotomy like that is just unreasonable imo
yes, better to just let them tear, right?
You are a warrior my friend 🧡
