You Are Allowed to Expect Something Different

I used to think painful pelvic exams were just something you put up with. A doctor once laughed when I winced. Another told me, when I asked if it should hurt that much, to just relax and be still. I accepted that as normal for years. The discomfort. The dismissiveness. The quiet sense that my pain wasn't really worth pausing for—that the appropriate response was to get through it and not make things difficult.

It took me a long time to understand that what I was experiencing had a name.

Hypertonic pelvic floor dysfunction. A real diagnosis. A real condition. Something that explained years of pain that had been laughed at, minimized, and handed back to me as a personal failing, as though I simply wasn't relaxing correctly.

Recently I finally told a doctor the full history.

She didn't brush past it. She didn't laugh or redirect or hand me a pamphlet and move on. She referred me to a urogynecologist, the right specialist for what I was actually dealing with, and I got the diagnosis I should have had years earlier.

And then something happened at my next routine exam that I want to tell you about.

Before anything started, while I was still fully dressed, before I'd moved anywhere near the table, my doctor walked me through exactly what she would do. She told me she would use the smallest speculum available for adults. That she would narrate every step before doing it.

And then she told me something I genuinely did not know was an option:

I could stop the exam at any time. For any reason. No explanation required.

I want to sit with that for a moment.

Because I had been going to doctors my whole adult life. I had winced and been laughed at. I had asked questions and been told to relax and be still. I had accepted pain as the price of getting through it.

And I did not know I could stop. I did not know the smallest speculum was an option. I did not know that a doctor could walk me through it beforehand, step by step, while I was still dressed, still in control of what happened next.

That is not the standard of care most of us have experienced.

It should be.

I am not writing this to make you angry at every doctor you've ever had, although some anger might be appropriate, and you're allowed to feel it.

I'm writing this because I want you to know that something different is possible.

If a doctor has ever laughed when you winced. If you've been told to just relax and be still in response to real pain. If you've spent years assuming that discomfort was just part of it, that your body was the problem, that asking for something gentler was asking for too much…

You were not the problem.

And you are allowed to expect something different.

You are allowed to ask for the smallest speculum. You are allowed to ask your provider to narrate before they act. You are allowed to stop at any time, for any reason, with no explanation required.

You are allowed to find a provider who treats your pain as information worth pausing for, not an inconvenience to manage around.

That kind of care exists. I am receiving it now. And I want that for you too.

If you've been putting up with dismissive care because you didn't know something different was possible — that's worth talking about. A good therapist can help you find your voice in medical settings too. That's exactly what this work is for.