May 10, 2002 Honiara, Solomon Islands
I'm having another medical situation that's making me nervous. I'm having some weird vaginal discharge. Three days last week I had this (in the middle of my cycle and I'm the worlds' most regular person). Then last night it happened again.
So I looked in the 1250 Healthcare Questions Women Ask book (which I think I should just steal from the group library, since I seem to be using it all the time anyway) and at first I couldn't find anything that really described what I was having.
Then finally I ran across this entry that talked about precancerous and cancerous conditions and it sounded just like what I've been having.
So I talked to my friend Virginia, who is a nurse, and she told me not to panic. It could just be a cyst or something. But I have to admit that I am kind of losing my sense of humor for these situations. Tomorrow (Saturday) I'm going in to Doctor Kori for a pap smear. Now isn't that a nice restful thing to look forward to for the weekend.
He says that they will courier the slide to Australia, rather than sending it through the hospital system, so I figure that is worth quite a bit of humiliation. Although it seems like it was bad enough baring by breasts to him in February.
May 11
Honiara
It was another one of those memorable Solomons experiences. The best I can say is, it's done.
The lowlight was when the speculum got stuck, open, internally, and the doc's gloves were too lubricated to get any traction to unstick it.
He says I have a polyp on the cervix; he took two slides and gave them to me.
I will pass them on to a friend who is going to Brisbane on Tuesday and he will pass them on to the mission office staff who will take them to the lab. Just like the Pony Express. And so we have by-passed the hospital here, and should get a result back within two weeks. Hopefully it's just a benign thing. But still, I don't want to live with this bleeding long-term and will need to have it dealt with. How to do that here is another story.
Supposedly it's not that complicated--but in a country where the hospital doesn't have syringes . . . and where they will splint your arm with a piece torn from a cardboard box . . .
