This afternoon I've been watching videos I found online that women have posted of their faces while getting an IUD. I don't know if it helped or made my anxiety worse. I did take heart a little when one of them said that the transvaginal ultrasound her dr did just after placement hurt; I've had 2 of those and while they were not pleasant experiences, they definitely didn't hurt. I'm also taking heart because in each of the videos their crinkled-up pain faces are very brief in duration. I'm telling myself three things going into this Tuesday morning: 1) pretend it's just a PAP and relax 2) compare whatever I feel during this procedure to the pain from the blood clot/mesenteric ischemia I had in June. It absolutely cannot even come close to the pain I felt with that. It just can't. Cuz if it did, remembering the high-octane pain meds I was on in June (Fentanyl) they would have to do more than just say "take ibuprofen" before you come in if it was gonna be excruciating. Or nobody would do it at all and IUD's would no longer exist. Right? and 3) any pain that I have with this would also be minimal compared to the pain that cancer would cause if I just let it go and did nothing and then as a result got endometrial cancer at some point down the road.