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As a woman in her ’30s, I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about my body. If you had asked me, I would have sworn I was well-informed. And then I started going to a new gynecologist and she literally blew my mind when she told I’d been checking my breasts all wrong. What? How had I missed this?
I knew about the circular check but not the up-and-down pattern. Well, maybe because the last time I learned about breast self-examination was from a pamphlet I got in high school. That was a while ago. After the jump, I asked other women about the most surprising things they learned from their gynos.
Contents
- 1. That untreated digestion issues can affect your fertility
- 2. The proper way to check your breasts
- 3. That you should not be using any scented soap in your vagina because it can cause vaginosis or UTIs
- 4. My gyno showed me my cervix and just seeing it blew my mind
- 5. That you can get HPV without having sex
- 6. My gyno told me that it’s easy to ignore the health problems that you don’t acknowledge
- 7. That my pubic bone and uterus are positioned in a kind of odd way compared with other women
- 8. That sperm can hang out inside you for a couple days just waiting to get you pregnant
- 9. That I had a tiny teratoma living on my ovary. Harmless, but still really weird
- 10. When my gyno took it upon herself to explain that the vagina is what’s called a “potential space,” which means that if there’s nothing keeping it open — like fingers, or a speculum or a penis — it collapses. Like, I’d always pictured my vag as a tunnel, but it’s actually more like a sleeping bag.
1. That untreated digestion issues can affect your fertility
2. The proper way to check your breasts
3. That you should not be using any scented soap in your vagina because it can cause vaginosis or UTIs
4. My gyno showed me my cervix and just seeing it blew my mind
5. That you can get HPV without having sex
6. My gyno told me that it’s easy to ignore the health problems that you don’t acknowledge
7. That my pubic bone and uterus are positioned in a kind of odd way compared with other women
8. That sperm can hang out inside you for a couple days just waiting to get you pregnant
9. That I had a tiny teratoma living on my ovary. Harmless, but still really weird
10. When my gyno took it upon herself to explain that the vagina is what’s called a “potential space,” which means that if there’s nothing keeping it open — like fingers, or a speculum or a penis — it collapses. Like, I’d always pictured my vag as a tunnel, but it’s actually more like a sleeping bag.
Original by Ami Angelowicz