“Pain on a Cosmic Level”
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Getting an IUD can be excruciating. Is there a better way?
By Christina Cauterucci - Slate
Nov 30, 2015
“Although the insertion process is relatively standardized, women’s reactions to it can vary widely. (Conti usually tells her patients they’ll feel three quick cramps: one from the tenaculum, one from the uterine sound, and one from the insertion tube.) For some women, the most painful part is the tenaculum. “I couldn’t breathe for a moment or two and I immediately broke out in sweat,” wrote one woman of her encounter with the clamp. “ ‘Fuck, doc, that really hurts,’ is all that I could push out between my clenched teeth.” For others, the uterine sound or the actual entry of the IUD insertion tube hurts the most. Pain tolerance threshold, body response, facility with language—there are too many factors that shape a personal pain narrative to make any single account authoritative.
Slate senior podcast producer Andrea Silenzi, 30, has one of those horror stories that could dissuade anyone from getting an IUD. She says her doctor told her to take some aspirin before her Mirena insertion two years ago. “She said, ‘You’ll feel a little uncomfortable,’ and I started laughing at her,” Silenzi says. “I’d read all the stories, and I knew it would be pain on a cosmic level.” When a medical resident began the procedure under the doctor’s guidance, the torment was too much for Silenzi to bear. “I felt like I was going to faint. At the moment I felt like I couldn’t take any more, I said, ‘How much longer?’ [The resident] said, ‘We’re just getting ready to insert it.’ ” Silenzi doesn’t remember which pre-insertion implement caused her such terrible pain, but no matter—she had to call off the procedure halfway through.”