The Professor’s Daughter said it would be fine. She had hers and drove herself home. No biggie, and I felt liberated. The fear subsided to only mere panics and I was taking charge of my sexual health. I was getting an IUD.

The morning started off fine—a little shave of the lady bits followed by coffee, toast, and an apricot. We drove to the doctor and I didn’t have to pay a co-pay because even my insurance company was happy that I’m not having children yet.

I had a conversation with my doctor and he seemed to know his stuff. He then asked all of the relevant questions.

Smoke? No. Drink? Yes. Drugs? No. Sexually transmitted diseases?

Secret Forty-Seven, Revealed. Yes. When I was eighteen I lost my virginity to my boyfriend, who had been my boyfriend since I was fifteen, except for eight months when we broke up, when he became a carrier of HPV and then gave it to me when we got back together. I knew he’d lost his virginity to a girl who was a bit notorious around town, because I wouldn’t give it up, but I thought I now needed to sleep with him if I wanted to keep him as my boyfriend. So, yes, I’ve had an STD that gave me cancer at just eighteen-years-old after only having sex with one person, whom I’d loved for a long time. They shaved the cells off of my cervix and thankfully I’ve been cancer-free ever since. But yes, I do have HPV and will always. And I have made my husband a carrier, something I had to tell him early on in our relationship. To which he responded, “I never want to sleep with anyone else but you, so it doesn’t matter to me.” And now you know why, eleven years later, I still love this man to pieces.

“No, I mean like gonorrhea or chlamydia, anything like that?” the doctor asked. He was completely unconcerned about my HPV and that made me feel happier, because when I got it way back when, my doctors and parents and anyone who knew treated me like a very, very, very bad girl. Poor thing, me at eighteen.

So I’m ready for IUD implementation. As the nurse readies the table, I ask the doctor what kind of pain level we’re talking about. “Some women barely flinch,” he said. “Others bawl me out afterward for not telling them how painful it was going to be. And there’s no indication of how one woman will react differently than another.” I said that I guessed he shared the same occupational hazard as a dentist in that respect. He said, “Worse. A dentist can use numbing agents but even a shot of anasthesia in the vaginal wall can be risky so we never use it for IUDs.”

Deep breath as I spread my legs because now it was time to find out which type of woman I was. A screamer. Oh me oh my, am I a screamer. Okay it wasn’t quite a scream but a very loud “Oh God” echoed around the room and then I yelled out the same again. Because it felt like the doctor had shoved a kitten into my uterus and it was trying to claw its way out, and I had the weird reactions of:

1) Wanting to yell, “Stop! I forgot to take an aspirin first!” which I did mean to do but forgot because I was too concerned about having nicely shaved and fresh smelling lady parts. Stupid. Really stupid.

2) I wanted to scream—and I’m not kidding I really did think this—“I don’t ever want to have children. Not ever!” Because the pain was so unbearable that I thought there’s no way I can ever do this for hours. No way.

For my own sake, I did not yell out those thoughts, only “Oh God,” whom I’m sure heard my shrill prayer all the way in heaven, though my husband promised me that he did not hear it in the waiting room. Then it was done.

“I’m sorry,” I told the doctor right away and “Thank you,” which proves again what I learned from watching The Fisherman’s Wife give birth; a good Midwestern girl never loses her manners, even in the toughest of times. Poor things.

The doctor said, “The pain was probably because your cervix is thin from where they took off the cells when you were younger. That and it’s hard to get to because it’s further back than most.” That second one I’d heard before. Odd that we can’t know this about our own bodies without someone telling us, huh? “You’ll need to use condoms for two weeks until the IUD is fully functioning but you’re free to have sex tonight if you want to.”

“No, thank you!” I exclaimed and instantly made the doctor uncomfortable, as if he’d just asked to have sex with me. I tried to think of what to say to make it better but, man, my social skills were not at their uttmost in that moment. “I’ve had enough for one day,” I said. He smiled and agreed.

He and the nurse left. I put my clothes on, stood up, walked into the hall and almost fell straight down. Black spots were everywhere. I was going to faint, but then the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had took over my body. I wanted to pee, poop, throw up, faint, and eat Thanksgiving meal (a feeling of being famished) all at one time. Everything my body can do without my consent wanted to happen right there all together at the same instant. The nurse saw me stumble back into the room.

I didn’t pee or poop or faint or eat anything, although I did spend the next 30 minutes feeling all of those urges intensely. I then spent the following 30 minutes throwing up. “This happens sometimes when a foreign object is introduced into the body,” the nurse whispered to me. She rubbed my back as I threw up into the same trashcan that contained the tools and discarded gloves and blood—my own freaking blood—from my IUD implementation. But her hand on my back felt like my mom and that helped like 80 billion percent more than the orange juice, blood pressure test, oxygen test, pulse test she’d been doing previously. And I had three more weird thoughts while puking:

1) My body is going to hate a baby if it does this over one little piece of plastic.

2) I hope I never need a heart transplant.

3) Why have I done this to my body when my body is so nice to me and carries me everywhere I want to go and doesn’t gain weight unless I eat three brownies instead of one and my lovely little body that doesn’t give me much trouble in the world and here I am shoving something up it that it obviously doesn’t like and this is definitely the sign that I have made the wrong decision, why did I do this?

When I stopped throwing up, they sent me home with my husband. And I learned from watching The Fisherman’s Wife give birth that in times of great pain, one needs to communicate clearly. So I told my husband, “Put your hand on my head. Not my forehead but the back of my head. Yes, like that. Take off your glasses. Now lean your head into my forehead like I’m the nicest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.” And he did and I felt better.

By nighttime I went to class and felt fine. Now, a few days later, I’ve had no spotting and no cramping. I can feel that it’s there but I’m waiting for that to go away too. The doctor says it will. And now I have an IUD. I can have sex with my husband without worrying about my calcium levels or if I should be getting ready to have a baby. I’ve got five years to just be and do as I please.

I don’t have to worry. And I think, though with the memory still fresh it’s hard to say for certain but I think, yeah, that was worth it.