Bolding mine. It didn’t hurt “after”, it hurt “during”.
Sonograms are being studied as an alternative. My aunt’s cancer was detected through a sonogram: she was pregnant, they had just gotten this brand new shiny machine (with lights!) and the nurse offered her a demo (my aunt is not a nurse, but she seems to have been school classmates with all the local nurses in her age bracket). So the nurse spatters this goo on auntie’s still-not-showing belly, shows her the little speck that still doesn’t look like a kid at all, heads north and says “uh, doctor? Dooooc-toooor!” in the voice of someone who is trying not to panic. Auntie and cousin are ok, thanks.
Not at all, dear. They don’t want to risk damaging the urethra or anything else in there if they don’t have to, so there is no reason to even touch the prostate in that kind of surgery.
I’ve only had it done once, so I don’t know what’s normal.
But they first did a big plate, and that was weird, but not painful. Then, they did a little plate that zeroed in on a particular spot where I had been having a lot of pain. So, the place where I was having the pain was specifically crushed to check it. It hurt a lot. A lot.
But the tech was lovely, really, and the experience wasn’t so bad.
Sorry, the methods section explains it better, but they’re refering to the reporting of pain immediately after the mammogram so that they aren’t needlessly prolonging the pain that the participants did feel, but it’s refering to the in-clamp pain, I believe.
[breast in clamp]
How about now?
[begin compressing]
Now?
[hard compression]
And now?
[fully compressed]
Okay, and what about now?
I’m sorry, I couldn’t catch that and I need to ask you to refrain from hitting me anyway.
Gee, my 54-year-old wife’s are quite lovely. Seems to be a lot of good-looking older boobage on the topless beaches I’ve been to as well.
[quote=askeptic]
I’ve had one prostate exam that hurt like hell, to the point where I damn near punched the doc, but he must have been the bastard son of Mengele, because I’ve never had that experience since. My advice is to get another doc.
The worst procedure I’ve ever had is a cystoscopy. I’m sure it was considerably worse than a mammogram, but nobody suggests we have one of those once a year.
It does, indeed, seem like 21st century medicine could devise a way of doing mammograms that entails a lot less discomfort.
All of the female examinations are humiliating and uncomfortable. I swear if men had to go through it they’d think of a better way.
As a friend of mine says, “If men had periods, tampons would be free.” And that’s the honest truth.
Anyone who thinks a finger up your butt is in any way equal to a gyno visit or a mammogram is sorely mistaken. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t even come close.
Plus, any thorough gyno is going to give you a complimentary finger up the butt as well. It’s quick, sure, but once you’ve gone there, duration isn’t really the issue.
I also had a male gyno tell me the butt finger was the worst part of the exam. Gee, for you or me? If you ask me, having a speculum cranked open in my other orifice is way worse.
I liken it to the sensation of having one’s breast backed over by a car tire. Or squeezed into the freezer door.
Fuckin’ wonderful.
I was told that the younger you are, the denser your breast tissue, therefore, the more likely they’ll squeeze tighter to get a good picture, and the more it’ll likely hurt. Old age is starting to look better to me…
Women:
Put on a paper dress, completely naked except for socks
Wait for doctor
Put feet in stirrups, legs apart, while doctor uses a speculum to crank your vagina apart
Attempt to lie still while doctor scrapes your cervix with a hard little brush
Again, lie there while doctor puts fingers inside you with one hand and uses the other hand to push on your possibly sore internals
Possibility of a finger up the butt—actually ok in comparison to the other stuff
Still lying on back have doctor expose your breasts and then manually push around on them, lift your arm up, feel around, etc.
All of this is going on while you still have KY dripping out of you from the speculum part of the exam.
Then they hand you a Kleenex, leave you to get dressed, come back, vaguely try to help you with whatever trouble you are having, and send you on your way (possibly still confused and having trouble that isn’t getting resolved).
THIS IS ANNUALLY.
So far as I know, there is no yearly exam that men have to go through that is even anywhere near this level of humiliation.
Believe me, I wouldn’t trade being a woman for anything, so there’s no hate or jealousy of men, but I do think women get the short end of the stick on health (and a lot of other) issues.
Oh yeah, also, that’s every year from age 15 or so to whenever you hit menopause at age 55 or so. And I’m pretty sure you still have to have them then.
Add in the annual mammogram starting at 32 (for me) and going until death.
Much obliged. It struck me that you were toting around a small gland that was presumably of no further use to you, and could possibly make a nuisance of itself, but if the surgery’s likely to cause more harm than it’s worth I can see why they’d leave it alone.
I wince slightly at the thought of what my FIL had done to his, which sounded much like he’d had a small heating element stuck up his urethra and applied to the prostate from inside. According to MIL though it gave him a whole new lease of life. Fortunately, the most invasive thing I’ve had to date was just a quick look at the Farmer Giles using what felt a bit like a medium-size funnel up the fundament, but I was quite relaxed about the whole thing and it didn’t hurt.
Not to make this a “my-pain-is-greater-than-yours” competition here, but I’d venture to state that for most women, having sexual intercourse when aroused and receptive is not at all comparable to having a speculum cranked open in one’s (profoundly un-aroused and un-relaxed) vagina during a GYN exam. Even inserting a tampon during menstruation isn’t really comparable, since the tampon is so much smaller and so well lubricated by the blood and stuff.
Count me in among the respondents who think that the finger up the butt is the least invasive part of the gyn-exam procedure. (Can’t say I was ever really bothered by the “humiliation” aspect, though.)
However, I certainly don’t envy any guy the experience of getting a swab up the urethra as you described. (Almost as bad-sounding as the experience of someone I know who had a probe stuck way up his urethra to try to fish out a stuck kidney stone. :eek: Oooooh, not fun.)
I had my first mammogram last fall. While not fun, it was mainly comparable to getting elbowed rather hard in the ribs. Mainly. What made it bad was the fact that they raised the plates until I was starting to stand on tiptoe. So, cold room, papergown, tiptoe, squish, don’t breath or move or we get to do this again. Just a bad combination.
But there was one thing I didn’t get. The plates that I was squished between had very straight edges. Ya see, my ribs aren’t straight. Neither is the connection between my breasts and my body. Much worse then the squishing was the hard corners pressing into things. Just a little curving to them would have greatly relieved the pinching.
When I saw a new young doctor this year and told her that I was a few months overdue for my annual mammogram due to moving, she told me that the new standard is no family history and no previous flaggable issues, every 2 years is fine. So I’m now only due after not having had one since 2004. Works for me. We have zero breast cancer in the family, so I’m hoping to continue the tradition.
I’ve had 100% nice mammo techs, and most of them don’t like those freezing rooms, either. However, I’ve had both painful and nonpainful mammos, and I honestly don’t know what the difference is. My first one was a breeze; my second one, at a different facility, I about clawed my way right through the ceiling. Once, a few years ago, they saw something they wanted to look at further since I have “dense tissue,” whatever that means (turned out to be a harmless little cyst), so sent me in for follow-up mammograms, and they came up with new and creative angles to squeeze the girls. Think up and down or sideways are bad? Try diagonally!!