Bodies: Stories about anatomy — The Story Collider

The human body is fascinating and sometimes kinda gross. In this week’s episode both our storytellers are sharing tales of their blood, flesh, and bones.

Part 1: When Rachel Gross winds up with a chronic vaginal infection she refuses to believe her new favorite IUD is the culprit.

Rachel E. Gross is a science and health reporter who writes for The New York Times, Scientific American, and the BBC. She is the author of the 2022 book Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, a New York Times' editors choice that Kirkus Reviews called "an eye-opening biological journey." Before that, she was a 2018-19 Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the digital science editor of Smithsonian Magazine, where she launched a column about unsung women in the history of science. When not expounding on the mindblowing science of vaginas and vulvas, you can find her vegan baking, roller skating, or punning onstage. Follow her at @rachelegross.

Part 2: Bryan Berlin discovers a mysterious bump on his butt but is too self-conscious to get it checked out.

Bryan Berlin is a comedian and storyteller living in Brooklyn. He's a Moth StorySLAM winner and the creator and host of Love Hurts, a podcast where guests share stories of the tough relationships in their lives. When he's not telling stories, he's teaching video and photography to high school students. Follow him everywhere @berlination and find more info at bryanberlin.com.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

It's March 5, 2017, and my life is about to change. I'm in the doctor's office holding my best friend's hand and we're both looking at the screen in front of us showing the inside of my uterus. I asked my doctor, we'll call her Dr. Tico, for a copy of the polaroid of my sonogram just because I want to remember this moment forever.

Later, I post a photo to Instagram. It's me, smiling, holding up that blurry, grainy little photograph. You can't really see her in the photograph, but the important thing is I know she's there. I caption it, “Welcoming you to the world, my beautiful baby IUD.”

Despite having just had a harpoon rammed up my cervix, I'm pretty pleased with myself. I've wanted an IUD forever. It's a piece of plastic you shove into your uterus and forget about for three to five years, and it makes you pretty much unimpregnatable. It is literally the easiest, safest, and laziest form of birth control I know, meaning it fits with all my values.

I name my hormonal IUD Newsom, after my favorite folk singer, Joanna Newsom, and the progressive lieutenant governor of California, Gavin. And we are very happy together. But not everyone is as pleased as I am about my new wombmate.

So I mentioned Newsom in my email newsletter, which just goes out to friends and family. It's called The Gross-Out, because my last name is Gross. And I immediately get a flurry of texts from my mom.

Rachel Gross shares her story at Oberon Theatre in Boston, MA in October 2018. Photo by Kate Flock.

She's like, “Oh, Rachel, that's private. What if your employer finds out? What if you scare off future boyfriends?”

And the next day, I Slacked my boss at work, at Smithsonian where I'm a science editor, that I will be working from home because I'm recovering from extreme IUD cramps, to which he responds, “Rachel, boundaries,” and sends me the facepalm emoji.

Honestly, I love shocking people so this just makes me love Newsom more. She's my guardian angel. She's my amulet of protection. She is my reproductive Cerberus, guarding the entrance to my fallopian tubes, making sure I don't get any unwanted visitors. Having an IUD makes me feel untouchable.

So I wake up more than a year later in June with a burning sensation between my legs. Never a good thing. I recognize my old foe, the UTI. For the uninitiated, I hate you. And a UTI is when bacteria, usually E. coli, get into your urinary tract leading up to your bladder. It basically feels like you constantly have to pee, but every time you do it's just a trickle.

So I spent an entire night going between my bed and the bathroom, eventually just giving up and dragging my laptop to the bathroom and watching Queer Eye on the toilet.

But I know the drill. I got my antibiotics. Ten days later, I go back to check in with Dr. Tico.

It turns out I don't just have a UTI. I have something called BV or bacterial vaginosis. I've never heard of this, which is weird, because I love learning about vaginas. I'm kind of the animal sex correspondent. But it's actually the most common bacterial infection of women's vaginas. One in three women have it.

And it's the overgrowth of a different type of bacteria, this time in the vaginal tract. Yes, women have three holes. It can be triggered by having sex. This makes sense. I am having more sex now that I'm in a happy relationship with a wonderful man named Alex, who also loves my IUD.

But I come home from the doctor with a plastic plunger. The idea of this plunger is you fill it up with this thick, white antibiotic cream every night and then you insert it into yourself and lay on your back and think about what you've done.

At this point, I'm exhausted. I'm not sleeping well, but more than that, it's tiring to go to work every day and try to hide the fact that you're itching yourself, running to the bathroom every five minutes, trying to get through meetings like you're not in pain and discomfort, and it's isolating not being able to talk about it. Because, for some reason, vaginal infections still aren't dinner table conversation, apparently.

One night, as I'm giving Alex my state-of-the-vagina update, I actually burst out crying. I couldn't explain this to him, but I suddenly just felt ashamed and dirty and worthless, like I had a big scarlet ‘V’ on my forehead.

Two more weeks pass. I go back to the doctor, I still have BV. Or it went away and came back, unclear. But now, the doctor tells me that there's something I really don't want to know, which is that the problem might be my IUD.

I'm like, “Are you kidding me? All I want to do is not get pregnant. Now, the vagina goddesses are punishing me.”

But apparently, there is an association between IUDs and some bacterial infections, and the reason is super gross, which is why I'm going to tell you about it. So your vagina is a delicate ecosystem with just the right balance of acid, heat, and microbes. I like to think about it as another planet.

When you introduce a foreign object, like a rocket or an IUD with strings hanging down, it changes the environment profoundly. With the IUD, bacteria love to cling to that string which then gets covered in cervical mucus which has gotten thicker because of your IUD hormones. And pretty soon, you have a colony of bugs hiding out in mucus caves and it's a fortress that no antibiotic can penetrate. It's called a biofilm. If you've seen the movie Aliens, I think of it as that mucous cave where all the humans are suspended with the aliens in their chest just waiting to burst out and attack.

At this point, I have two options. One, I can remove my IUD. I really hate this option because we can't be sure it's Newsom's fault and it wouldn't be fair to her and, also, I really don't want to go back to the world of shitty birth control options.

And there's number two. It's called boric acid and it's the main ingredient in roach poison. Yeah, that was my face too. I actually read about it online, so I brought it up with my doctor. What I'd read is that it's this white powder that has been used since the 1800s to treat vaginal infections and that's because it works. It kills good bacteria, bad bacteria, and that nasty biofilm we've been talking about. But it's basically an atom bomb for your vagina.

So it's more of a last resort option. But Dr. Tico agrees that a recurrent case of BV is an appropriate time to deploy the atom bomb. The important thing to know if you're ever prescribed boric acid is that it comes in a pill, like any kind of antibiotic, but it's actually not a pill you swallow. It's a vaginal suppository so you just put it up there. It comes in a container with a skull and crossbones and the word ‘poison’ in large red letters, and it says, “Keep away from pets and children.”

As if that weren't bad enough, my doctor also said my boyfriend couldn't go down on me for two weeks. Talk about punishment.

I was a good patient. I took my poison every night. And as I was waiting for it to dissolve, I was having some more negative feelings towards Newsom. Like, what the hell, Newsom? You were supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to help me be not a slave to my own biology. Now, you're making me choose between a burning bush and putting rat poison in my vagina.

Five days into this regimen, I pass out early at Alex's place and I woke up and it was completely dark. I realized pretty quickly I'd forgotten to do something important, so I went through my mental rolodex. Call mom, charge my phone, ah, vagina poison.

So I get the pill from my purse and go to the bathroom, but it's 4:00 AM and I'm half asleep. I forget what I'm doing and I look and realize I'm holding a pill in my hand, so I swallow it. And as I'm sitting on the toilet, I realize, oh, fuck. It was like a tornado went through my head, clearing out everything with that one thought. I just swallowed poison.

I was feeling lightheaded. There was a ringing in my ears, and I was suddenly really aware of my body, the way that my legs were shaking and that my knees were knocking together. I just put my head in my hands and started chanting to myself, “Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God, what have I done?”

I ran back to the room, I got my phone and I Googled ‘I swallowed boric acid’. Right after the poison control hotline was a study and it was called Fatal Ingestion of Boric Acid in An Adult. I was able to skim the preview text and, basically, a 45-year-old guy had swallowed boric acid and he had immediately started vomiting and having green diarrhea.

At this point, I'm panicking. All I can do is picture myself on a stretcher, getting my stomach pumped, losing all control over my body. So I start shaking Alex awake. I'm like, “I think I swallowed something.”

He's still mostly asleep so he says, “Oh, I'm sure it's fine.”

And I say, “No, it's poison.”

Until now, I actually hadn't told him what I was taking for my infection because I was embarrassed. So now I show him the container with the skull and crossbones and my Google search results. He sits right up and immediately says, “We're going to the hospital.”

I didn't realize this at the time as I was a little distracted, but I later found out that he only found one of his shoes. So he actually took me to the hospital in one shoe and one sock.

But I remember that the ride to the hospital was excruciating. I couldn't sit still. I kept having to tap my foot and clutch at his shirt. And I just kept mumbling over and over again, “Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God.”

As soon as we got to the emergency room, I ran to the check-in window and I asked the nurse, “Am I going to die?” She said she wasn't sure. I had to wait for the doctor. They put me in a wheelchair and brought me to a hospital bed.

About 20 minutes later, the doctor comes up. As soon as he hears the word ‘boric acid’, he calls the poison control hotline, which doesn't make me feel better. Then he asked me to recite what happened that night and so I tried to remember the steps. Woke up late, was confused, swallowed my suppository. I noticed that there's a nurse nearby trying not to laugh.

The doctor gently tells me that I am not going to die. Instead, I will probably have some cramps and a little gas. I swallowed 100 milligrams of a weak acid. I would have had to take the whole bottle for it to have any real effect, he tells me. And if I've been able to look closer at that Google search result, I would have seen that that was a man who took two cups of boric acid in a suicide attempt.

So the doctor gives me some graham crackers and a little cup of apple juice and he sends me home with a bill for $100 because American healthcare. And I just lay there trying to get control over my heartbeat, trying to process the fact that I'm not actually going to die.

After that night, I took the rest of my pills exactly as prescribed and my BV cleared up and it hasn't been back. But I'm very aware that it could come back at any time and, if it does and it's resistant, I've decided I will remove my IUD. But for now, Newsom and I, we have an understanding. I think we're both aware of each other's limits a little more, but by taking her off her pedestal, it's improved our relationship. Now, I'm able to appreciate her for what she really is, an ingenious piece of plastic that, in the best-case scenario, frees me up to live my life.

I'm no longer as romantic about birth control. I know my IUD isn't a guardian angel. It isn't a magic amulet of protection. It's a medical device you put in your body and that comes with risks as well as benefits. Most people won't swallow their vagina poison, but no matter what you do, there will always be a biofilm of unanswered questions and possibilities you couldn't possibly plan for.

Thank you.

Part 2

When I was in fifth grade, my family moved in the middle of the school year and, suddenly, I was the new kid at school. And there was a lot of adjustment that took place over that first year, but my biggest adjustment was that, suddenly, I had to change for gym class. That was frightening for me.

The thing that made it weirder was that everyone had been doing it for months before I came in, so they had already accepted this thing. But I was like, “This is insane.” Because at my school, there was only one locker room, and the girls got the locker room so the guys just had to go to a random classroom.

And there were just those floor-to-ceiling windows that just had all this light coming in. There was nowhere to hide. Everyone just had to change out in the open and I hated doing it. What I would do is I would wear two shirts to school and then I would get those pants that had the zip‑off bottoms that would turn into shorts. So my change routine for gym would be take off one of my shirts and zip off the bottom of my pants and then I would be changed for gym.

I felt like I had beat the system until my gym teacher yelled at me in front of the entire boys fifth grade saying I needed to change every day, and then he monitored me every day to make sure I would change.

Bryan Berlin shares his story at The Caveat in New York City, NY in November 2019. Photo by Zhen Qin.

I was ten years old and it was the first time realizing my body and that I didn't want people to see it and feeling uncomfortable around people in those situations. This went on over the years. I couldn't go to a urinal if there wasn't a divider in between the urinals. I'd have to go into a stall because I just couldn't be around that.

I get to my senior year of high school. I'm taking a shower one day and I'm just washing all of the nooks and crannies, and I come across this weird bump. This bump is right at the top of my butt at the bottom of my tailbone, right where that meets. I feel this weird bump and I'm like, “This is new. I have not felt something like this before.”

I get out of the shower and I'm in the mirror trying to bend over to see what is going on back there and I see this little bump that is about the size of a pea. I'm like, “This is not normal. Maybe I should get this checked out.” And in my head this idea of maybe this is cancer, I could die.

But I also know that, in order to get that checked out, I have to tell this to my parents who'd then probably want to see it, and then would have to take me to a doctor who'd want to see it. All these people would have to see me with my pants down. Instead, I could just kind of ignore it, you know. Because I was a kid with acne at the time. Maybe this was just a pimple and it would go away.

So that's what I decided to do. I was going to ignore this thing on my butt. And that didn't really go that well. It didn't go away. So now I tried to study it and figure out what it could be. I would poke it and prod it. Again, I felt like I should tell somebody about it.

But I did find out this thing about it where at night before I go to bed, I always would try to pee so I wouldn't have to get up to pee at night. I realized if I pushed on this little butt pimple that extra pee would come out and it would save me from having to get up at night to pee again. In my head, I'm like, “This isn't a problem. This is a super power.”

So I kept ignoring this thing. And it had been a few months. At one point, I end up at a friend's birthday party. It's not like an alcohol party, because I didn't go to those parties in high school. But there's guys and girls there.

I want to be cool. I was with my dad playing golf earlier in the day and I had this tucked in polo shirt. I didn't want to go to the party with a tucked in polo shirt, because that's not cool, so I untucked this polo shirt. It's a size too big so it's kind of going down to my thighs. I realize this is a better look than the tucked in shirt.

So I'm around this party having a good time. I get home at night and I go to take off my clothes, and there is just blood all over the back of my khaki shorts. I'm freaking out for two reasons. The first is that I was just at a party with a bunch of my friends and I had blood all over the back of my shorts and nobody said anything about this to me. Were they talking behind my back the whole time? I can't go back to school.

And I realized that my polo shirt had been long enough untucked that it had covered the blood, and so the gods had saved me from humiliation.

I'm thinking about it and something during golf must have burst the butt pimple. In my head I'm like, “Well, maybe I should deal with this now.” I'm looking at this blood stain on the back of these khakis and it kind of looks like a Rorschach test. There's two interpretations and one is you should deal with this now, but the other is like, well, this thing has burst and now you're fine. So I went with that interpretation because it meant I didn't have to tell anybody about this.

I graduated high school and I go to college and this thing doesn't go away. It's still there. It came back to its regular form after this burst. But now, it's starting to become more of an issue. I can't sit without it getting uncomfortable and me having to change positions.

Around this time, I actually get my first girlfriend and that's this new thing because, now, I'm having somebody regularly see me naked and that's new and something to get used to. Eventually, I work up the courage to tell her about my little zit back there and she's like, “Oh, yeah. You should probably get that looked at.”

I continued to ignore her in my head saying to get this thing looked at. And I'm going on just being uncomfortable but working around it. Every once in a while, I'll try to pop it or just make it go away by my own. And I can never go search this thing on the internet. I don't want it to have a name or I don't want to know what it is because I feel like if it's out in the world, it's real, and if it's just in my head, it's okay.

Then eventually, my girlfriend and I break up at the beginning of my sophomore year of college and it's the first time I realized that I've just been ignoring a lot of things. I had jumped into this relationship right at the beginning of my freshman year of college and sort of put everything into this relationship and ignored college and the real world and being an adult. This breakup made me think about I have to take things seriously.

This thing had been on my butt for two years at this point, so maybe it was the time to tell somebody about it. So I have my yearly physical and I go see my doctor at the health center at college. My doctor is Dr. Doyle. I've seen him a few times for sleep issues and some other stuff since my freshman year, so I'm comfortable with him and it feels like this is the time to say something.

So at the end of my physical and he's like, “Do you have anything else you want to ask me about today?” I say, “Yeah. I have this weird bump on my butt. I don't really know what it is.”

He's like, “Oh, just take your pants down.”

I'm stressed taking my pants down and it feels like fifth grade gym class again, but I do it. He looks at it for like two seconds and he's like, “Oh, that's a pilonidal cyst. It's not a big deal. You could just get a minor surgery and it'll be taken care of.”

He says it's so nonchalantly that I'm almost mad. I wanted it to be a bigger thing because I had spent so much time worrying about this thing. I'm stressed but I'm relieved. Finally, I have relief after two years of worrying about this thing.

I go and I finally Google search what a pilonidal cyst is. It's very common for people that are younger, especially men, because what it is it's essentially just like an ingrown hair that has become infected and fills with pus. So I've worried for two years about an ingrown hair thinking it was cancer and I was going to die. But now, I have to deal with this new reality and something more embarrassing than knowing that I had ignored this for two years.

The surgery, it goes really well, but there's this thing about the surgery. Basically, the doctor was like, “We can stitch this thing up, but because you're an active person and you're young, at some point you could be doing a physical activity and the stitches could rip.”

And the thought of my ass tearing stitches, I was just like, “No, I don't want that. Please, no, no, no, no.”

He's like, “Okay. Well, the option then is to have an open wound and you have to go to a nurse every day to get it cleaned and repacked with gauze.”

I'm like, “I guess that's the option? I don't know, but sure.”

So the day after the surgery, I go back to my health center and I go see Dr. Doyle. He sits me down and he pulls down my pants and he's like, “Hey, everything looks good. It just looks like somebody went at you with a meat cleaver.”

It's this joke that I laugh for the first time of this whole two-year thing. I can laugh about this stupid thing that I've been freaking out about for so long.

Then he's like, “Hey, this is Dot. She's the nurse that's going to be helping you. She'll probably be here most of the time.”

So then I meet Dot, and Dot's like, “Hey, you know, my son had this actually. It's no big deal.”

She really puts me at ease, packs my wound, I leave. Have to come back the next day, do the same thing. After a week, I'm about used to Dot. She's telling me about her son, I'm telling her about my day. We're becoming kind of friends.

Then one day, Dot doesn't show up and there's a new nurse. And I'm like, “Oh, this is new again. I have to show another person my butt. Oh, God, this sucks.” But Dot's back and I'm getting used to this thing.

Along the way, there's times when I have to spend a weekend away and then I have to tell a friend, “I have this thing and I kind of need help packing and cleaning this butt wound. Can you help me?” And I'm getting more and more used to talking about my butt.

It's not fully healed by the end of the school year and I'm working at a summer camp over the course of the summer. There's nurses at this camp who mainly just give medicine to kids and help with a bee sting or a sprained ankle. I have to go explain to them that me, this college‑age student, has a thing that they have to deal with every day and clean out and pack, which is definitely what they didn't sign up for by going to work at a summer camp.

But every week, there's a new nurse at camp. There's eight weeks of camp and every week I have to tell the new nurse about this thing. I'm getting so used to it at this point, by week three, my pants are already halfway off as I'm explaining this to them, and they're like, “What's happening?”

I'm like, “You got to pack this thing. I got to get out of here.”

And I conquer the cyst. I get past it. It heals and I'm okay. I feel like if I really won, I guess this is the point of the story where I'd moon all of you right now to show you that I'm okay. I guess I'm still not okay, though. I still can't pee at a urinal if there's not a divider and I've never taken a shower at a gym after a workout. There's things that I'm just not comfortable with. But I've gotten really comfortable with my butt hanging out and strangers seeing it and it being okay. I'm sharing it with a bunch of strangers and it feels like that's a victory enough for me, so thank you.