Ultrasound

This is an ooky girl stuff post. Reading it constitutes consent to hear about the female reproductive system, and not in that somewhat arousing chick-blogger's-lesbian-fantasies way, either.

Having been through fertility treatments and assorted other examinations, I'm starting to consider myself a Sonogram Veteran.

This last time it was because I had some kind of strange occasional pain in my right ovary. "If we want to be safe," the OB-GYN had cautioned, "we should have an ultrasound."

"I'll check to see if the insurance will cover it," I replied. I was assured that it would, so we went merrily ahead.

I can never help asking them to identify my organs, but have you ever looked at those little screens they use?—the shapes that are pointed out don't look like anything on those charts the grade school teachers show us when they want to explain how our menstrual cycles will work. The images on the screen aren't even shapes, exactly: they're lines and little bits of light, harder to see than a spider's web in a dark hallway.

As the doctor works the probe around he points out the uterus (one curved silvery line) and the bladder (a dark speck) and the ovaries in turn (they look like tiny little round spots of television static, as if you were watching TV in the old days and turned to a channel that didn't exist: just white-and-black "snow").

Every time I go in wanting to believe that I'll see real reproductive organs, and every time I feel as if I'm trying to see the animals someone else envisions in random cloud patterns. But the guy who imagines he can see my uterus and ovaries is wearing a white coat, and I don't want to seem like an idiot. So he says, "here's the uterus, here's your right ovary," and I exclaim, "how fascinating" and sort of nod.

There's nothing there. There's never anything really there. The emperor is wearing less than I am, lying on that table.

This time, he suggests that they need an "overall view," so of course they put some more lube below my belly button and he rubs the wand around on my lower abdomen to appease whatever spirits live in the machine behind the little dark screen.

"See? The images are less distinct, but you can see them in relationship to each other."

"Isn't that interesting?" I respond, hoping that the Sonogram Spirits are now happy and I can put on my clothes. And, yes, of course: The images were so clear when the wand was inside me.

Finally, he pronounces my reproductive system "perfect," and I tell him I always knew it was, deep down. And then he lets me know that ultrasound doesn't always spot ovarian cancer. Naturally, I want to shriek that there's no point in undergoing this silly exercise if he can't promise, Scout's Honor, that there aren't any icky yucky cells inside me. But I'm in my 40s and know things don't work like that: even the professionals who talk to the Sonogram Spirits are fallible sometimes. So I thank him, wait for him and his assistant to leave, and put my clothes back on.

Before I leave I look one more time at the machine. I'm severe with it. I raise one eyebrow ever-so-slightly. "Don't fuck with me, Spirits," I warn. And I sweep out the door.

I feel that I was fairly clear.

So now I'm safe. I faced the Ovarian Cancer Spirits down, and they blinked.