It was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I haven't gone since my last infertility treatment, a good seven or so years ago. Yeah, I know, I know. But part maybe that, well, I went through injections and sonograms and sometimes daily blood tests, and mood swings and ginormous breasts and ovaries (that first time. I could feel the ovaries when I climbed stairs, and one slipped behind my uterus so all those eggs? Gone to waste) not to mention a trip to San Antonio for two weeks the first time, and being pretty much trapped at my inlaws the third time, because we lived in a third floor walk up and I was forbidden stairs - anyway, all of that, plus Jonathan's blood pressure going up and up, and it *failed*.
Not a pleasant association.
But it's been seven years and it's silly to not go, so I asked my friend Riki, from my Pakua class, for a rec. And I recognized the name - I think his brother wrote *the* Halachic work on infertility, and we own it. And he was lovely. He asked me good questions, he encouraged me, not just to get the mammography and colonoscopy I'm also overdue for, but also to adopt in very warm terms.
Speaking of warm - he warmed the speculum. Really. :)
Even that part was pleasant. He talked to me all the way through, he told me what he was doing and why, and he pronounced me normal. And he told me that the PAP smear would not make me niddah, something I needed to know. So, I'm glad I went.
And he gave me recommendations for the colonoscopy and the mammography.
Today was also pakua.
Even so, I have to admit it was cool to do all the grey belt stuff in front of someone who didn't see me learn them. :)
And she saw me in actual *pants*. Which I'm sure was a thrill. Not.