I’m quickly getting back in the swing of things here. I found out a few days before I came back that I’d be at Planned Parenthood for my clinical rotation this fall, which had me pretty stoked about the coming semester. I flew back from Rome on Monday night, and started classes again on Tuesday afternoon, leaving me enough time to get myself together on Tuesday morning, but not enough time for the day of moping that usually happens when I get back from California.
My first class was Comprehensive Women’s Health (awesome!). I found out when I got there that we had a whole day of learning about IUDs planned for the next day. Some people were a little alarmed by a surprise extra day of class, but like a nerd, I was totally excited. This is partly for selfish reasons, because I’m a little fixated on the goings-on of my own uterus, but of course also because I want to become an awesome provider.
IUD Day was largely a sales pitch from reps for ParaGard (the non-hormonal, copper-based IUD). Most of their information was accurate, but the woman was claiming that it doesn’t hurt at all when it’s inserted (IT DOES, though not for very long). When she was talking about selection criteria to determine whether a patient is a good candidate for an IUD, she was making some judgmental comments about “frequent flyers” who come in “all the time” for STD testing. I wanted to raise my hand and ask, “What, exactly, is ‘all the time?’ And are you referring to women coming in for STD screening or STD treatment?” I decided that it wouldn’t be very fruitful to argue with a company rep.
Luckily, one of my friends pointed out that the woman had just said that having an IUD doesn’t actually increase a woman’s risk of getting pelvic inflammatory disease, so why would it be more advisable to prescribe birth control pills to the so-called “frequent flyers” instead of an IUD? The woman didn’t really have a solid answer for this, and moved on. Hm.
Overall though, it was a great day of inserting little pieces of plastic into model pelvises. Oh, and the picture above kinda makes me laugh: when I got my IUD, I was joking around saying, “Would I get the same effect if I just stuck a penny in there?” Heh…I might to have to work on my professional demeanor.
