Sunday, August 21, 2005

A Peculiar Crusade

I need your help with a campaign. My recent medical adventures have ignited a small new passion: to get some kind of anesthesia made available for a very painful exam that lots of women have to go through. My informal poll shows that half my pals have been there at least once.

Like being stabbed, an endometrial biopsy is fairly quick but hurts like hell. A friend who has gone through childbirth twice said this test was the worst pain she'd ever felt. And it's routinely done (at least in my town) with no painkiller of any sort.

Here's what I'm asking: suggest to any gynecologist you know that they offer some kind of numbing of mind or body for this procedure. (To men who've read this far: tell any chum of yours who's in this line of work.) A doc who starting doing this would be a sure superhero of mythic proportion. Women would probably fly from all parts of the continent just to have this test.

I've already talked to my doctor though as of Wednesday I won't have the parts for this kind of exam. And let me say, I'm not one who is angry with the medical profession. Quite the reverse. I'm permanently grateful to my doctors and others for the treatment I and several loved ones have had. But I'd feel like a passive sheep if, feeling strongly as I do just now, I didn't speak up about this unnecessary pain.