It was back in my “soccer mom” phase, when I was of the mindset that attending the end-of-the-season season party was more important than the office “open house.” Even though we had lost every game, I knew that trophies would be liberally distributed to all. Perhaps for this reason, I believed my husband. I did feel guilty. I should have been at that office party. Surely that guilt was making me feel sick? Now I know that even the best of men, the most nurturing of men, still believe, deep down, that when a woman cries it’s a psychological issue.  I don’t argue with that. I know it’s true. But this time it wasn’t. It wasn’t until I was doubled over in the back bathroom moaning that my husband finally took charge and called the doctor.

 “Take her to the ER,” she said briskly.

In no time he had the kids farmed out to the neighbors and me strapped in the front seat of his car.

“Oooooooooh” was all I could say.

I thought it was something I had eaten at the soccer party, which had featured quite an elaborate buffet of chile con queso, taquitos, and, my downfall, sopapillas.

We pulled into the ER and I was on a gurney in seconds. It was crowded, the ER was, but my doctor had told my husband to tell the nurse, when he checked me in, to have her called immediately. I don’t remember much until I heard the nurse order me, in a stern voice:

 “Calm down. Stop exaggerating. It’s not that bad. Practice your breathing.”

I did as I was told. I began the “He He He Hoos” that I had been taught in my pre-pregnancy classes.

“He He He Hoo”

“He He He Hoo”

It did calm me down.

“He He He Hoo!” I had been so proud of my performance during the births of my two children.

“The doctor has ordered an ultrasound,” I heard.

Ultrasound. The very words conjured warm feelings of going in for a pre-natal check up. Of the nurse, warming the gel so that it would not feel cold on my increasingly huge belly. Of the sound, when she turned the microphone on, of the heart beating. My baby’s heart! Then fleeting glimpses of a head, a hand, a leg, perhaps?

I was being wheeled down a long corridor. They had given me something, I’m sure of that now. It didn’t hurt as much. But my sensations were all muddled.

I was in a room. With the usual computer set up.

“We'll start the ultrasound,” they said.

“Sure,” I nodded. I knew all about ultrasounds.

Then it began. Something like a broom handle was pushed up me.

“Hey!”

“Your doctor ordered this,” the nurse said. “It won’t take long.”

“It hurts!” I said.

“Your doctor requested this,” the nurse repeated.

I had ultimate confidence in my doctor. She had delivered both of my babies.

The broom handle went into my vagina again. It poked around until it hit the top of my cervix. I felt impaled on the probe. There were two of them doing the “procedure.” One moved around the “probe” while the other looked intently at the screen.

Was my husband there? I don’t remember. All I remember was the discomfort, the penetration. So clinical. So cold.

“That’s it,” the nurse said as the probe was pulled out.

I was wheeled into the operating room. It was midnight. I recognized my doctor, my beautiful doctor, dressed in scrubs and behind a face mask.

“Do you think that you can do this?” I said in the few minutes before I lost consciousness.

She nodded. Not a doubt in her mind.

The operation was a success. I had a grapefruit sized cyst on one ovary. It had somehow swung around and strangulated my left ovary. She removed it and sent it off for testing.

“Why the ultrasound” I asked her in a follow up visit.

“I was pretty sure,” she said, “but I had to be positive before I operated.”

“It was awful,” I said.

“I know,” she said.

I understood that it had been medically necessary, and besides, I trusted my doctor. Had she not removed the cyst, determined that it was benign, and was I not, after a few days in bed, able to move around and quickly get back to normal? Indeed, I healed right up and soon forgot, until now, even the existence of such an awful procedure--“the one that shall not be named.”

More important to me then was the fact that I had several delicious days at home alone, and that no one ever begrudged me for missing that office party.