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  • First name
    Sophie
  • Last name
    Shao
  • Country
    United Kingdom

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  1. Content Article
    In this personal account, hub member Sophie talks about the trauma she experienced after a painful contraceptive device (IUD) fitting, and the impact this has had on her subsequent experience of medical procedures. She argues that damaging narratives around female pain cause harm to patients in multiple ways and have consequences that reach far beyond the initial experience of pain.
  2. Community Post
    Really moving reading everyone's experiences, solidarity to all of you. Similar to a lot of people here, I found my IUD fitting the single most painful experience of my life. I was not informed by the NHS website or the person doing the insertion that the procedure would be anything beyond 'uncomfortable'. I was allowed to leave the treatment room despite being barely able to walk, and 5 minutes later I fainted in the sexual health clinic's toilets. I have never felt so alone with my pain, or so violated by an institution which I trusted. The NHS website's phrasing that the procedure might be 'uncomfortable' is an insult. I know they probably don't want to scare people off getting what is, let's face it, a really effective form of contraception - but allowing people to go uninformed into painful medical procedures, because the procedure is for 'their own good' in the long term, is a horrendously paternalistic way of doing healthcare. The vital thing I want to add to this conversation is the long-term consequences on my physical and mental health. I'm now in my mid-20s and like all cervix-havers my age, I've started getting letters from the NHS cervical screening service to go get checked for cervical cancer. I know this is a life-saving screening service, but my experience with the IUD fitting has made me extremely reluctant to let anyone wielding a speculum anywhere near my body ever again! Before I had the coil fitted, I had undergone gynaecological exams before and found them unpleasant but very manageable. I could get on with my day afterwards. Now, after the trauma of my IUD fitting, I find any kind of gynaecological exam very, very difficult, even something as relatively innocuous as a smear test. I had to get a cervical biopsy recently, and although on a rational level I knew it wouldn't be anywhere near as painful as the IUD insertion, as we all know, trauma doesn't live in the rational parts of our brains. I lost sleep the night before the exam, and was sweating and crying uncontrollably during it, and worst of all, this trauma-induced anxiety made the procedure more painful than it needed to be, because I was completely unable to relax. This is the worst thing about all of this for me. It's not just 5 minutes of pain for 5 years of easy contraception. The complete shock of how painful my IUD fitting was has permanently changed my relationship to my own gynaecological health, to my own body. If that isn't medical malpractice, then I don't know what is.
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