“Everything, absolutely everything feels wrong to a duckbill”
Patricia van Liemt is a radio presenter, writer and mother of Maria (12) and Phaedra (9). Every Friday she writes striking, honest, funny and above all recognizable columns about her life and motherhood.
“I would give anything if a curtain separated me from the rest of the cold room. It’s ten past eight on Tuesday morning and after a quick kiss to both children who went to school by bike, I’m in the car.
Stiff with stress
Several doomsday scenarios travel with me in the backseat. Then I find a small moment of happiness in the form of a parking space, right in front of my GP’s practice. This visit was unexpected yet planned. The day before, a story of metastatic ovarian cancer came to me and the hypochondriac in me was immediately stiff with stress. When was the last time I had a pap smear? Two, three, maybe four years ago? Oh God.
“When was the last time I had a Pap smear? Oh God”
‘Good morning’, I hear myself say under my breath to a fairly empty waiting room. It seems that most clichés come to life at the doctor. Just after I’ve decided not to look at my phone, but to leaf through a magazine, I hear: ‘Mrs van Liemt’.
Extremely vulnerable
Why does it always feel like I have to confess to the doctor? Like I have to apologize for my ailments. After a slightly exaggerated story on my part, she happily proposes to do a smear. The whole process is killing for me.
The struggle starts with the question of whether or not I will take off my socks. I used to take them off, now I leave them on. Don’t ask me why. Must be an age thing. I am lying on an extended piece of paper with my legs wide open, so there is no curtain or anything else to increase the feeling of privacy. I feel naked and extremely vulnerable.
That awful duckbill
The doctor takes a large iron duckbill from a drawer and holds it briefly under the hot tap. “Then it’s not so cold,” she says. Any attempted mitigation is welcome and so I am grateful to her. Her fingers push aside my labia and the now cooled device tries to penetrate.
Everything, absolutely everything feels wrong to a duckbill. It’s unwieldy, cold and not user-friendly. She accompanies the process by saying that since the invention of the duckbill in 1840, practically nothing has changed about the instrument. NOTHING. Can you let that sink in for a moment? We’ve gone goddamn horse and buggy to fucking moon landings, but the duckbill hasn’t changed. How?
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Takes forever
I see small beads of sweat appear on my doctor’s forehead. “Sorry, but I can’t find the opening of your cervix.” No, do you think it’s crazy. You’re using an 1840s device, I want to yell at her, but I hold back and say “Sorry.” That answer is actually even more bizarre, as if I can help it that my cervix is not properly marked on Google Maps.
“As if I can help it that my cervix is not properly marked on Google Maps”
After what seems like an eternity, a giant cotton swab does the trick and I am dismissed from the pain bench. A week later I get a normal Pap result, thank God, but don’t get me started on the progress in medical care for women.
Just this
A study by social researcher Françoise Molenaar on the use of the duckbill yields the following results: 44% of all women find the duckbill painful, 23% even embarrassing. 1 in 10 women say they have received inappropriate questions or comments during the survey and 3% experience it as sexual harassment.”
Would you rather listen to Patricia’s column? Which can. Every Friday between 2 and 4 pm she reads it on Wild FM.
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