T.M.I.

I really didn’t need to know anything about Sancha’s vagina. In fact, I could live the rest of my life quite happily without having much information about the vaginas of most of the women I know. But sometimes we learn things we never really wanted to—and then we cannot UN-learn them.

I go to Susan’s class only on Wednesdays now, and that works out well for both of us. Another volunteer, Mark, has started coming to her class, as well. Mark used to work in Immigration Services at the Institute, but now that they have hired more lawyers for those services, he “can get back into the classroom,” as he put it. Mark is tall and thin with a square head and black-framed glasses. He seems comfortable explaining sentence structure, but not so much learning all the Nepali names.

More new students appear in Susan’s class every week. In addition to the woman from Thailand who started a few weeks ago, and the two sisters-in-law from Bhutan, we have the gentleman from Iraq, another Bhutanese woman, and another man from Bhutan. The latter wears thick-rimmed glasses and an impressively lush mustache. Not many of the Bhutanese refugees I’ve worked with sport facial hair, other than the occasional scruffy shadow that gets razored off within a few days. 

These bring our legion to almost thirty, so two volunteers is not unwarranted.

When I came to class this week, I indulged in a few happy choruses of hello teetser/good morning! from students I hadn’t seen in a while: Amita, Drolma, and Deepta who feel like long-time girlfriends of mine; and Yadu, Bibek’s non-verbal son whose enormous smile always lifts my heart.

As I passed the rows of tables and started to put my bag down, Sancha followed me tentatively, kind of sidling up behind me. Sancha is probably in her late sixties or early seventies with all gray hair and no teeth. She has told me that she first lived in Minneapolis when she came to the US three years ago, that her husband is dead, and that she has only one son. She wears a wool sweater over her shirt and wrap skirt, even on the hottest summer days.

I turned to her and said good morning; she bowed slightly and gave me some papers that she had folded several times and that were damp from her sweaty hands. They appeared to be discharge papers from a hospital with detailed information about post-surgical care. 

Bed rest for two days; report unusual pain or blood seepage; nothing in the vagina for six weeks.

My cheeks reddened a bit at this last one.

“Why are you giving me this, Sancha?” I asked. There was some spidery writing in black pen on one of the papers, a date and a couple of words I couldn’t make out.

“Hospital, going,” she replied, waving and flicking her hands away from her in a gesture the Bhutanese use for everything from I don’t know to that’s wrong to I don’t understand.

I folded the papers and gave her an expression that I hoped conveyed my confusion: I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes while raising my shoulders a bit.

Sancha nodded and flicked her hands.

“Have you been in hospital?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

She nodded yes, then said “No.”

“Are you going to go to the hospital?”

She looked confused and spoke some Nepali with Deepta and Drolma before trying again.

“My…Tuesday…hospital…going.”

“Oh,” I answered with relief. “You’re going to the hospital next Tuesday? Okay.”

I folded the papers and gave them back to her.

“Teetser,” she said, taking the papers but reluctant to go sit down. “I going … Tuesday… longtime. Is okay?”

“Yes, it’s okay,” I said. “I hope it’s all okay.”

She seemed satisfied and took her place at the front table.

When I mentioned the papers to Susan a while later, saying Sancha will have “a procedure of a pelvic nature,” Susan looked as taken aback as I was.

“You didn’t need to know that, did you?” she asked with the faintest smile on her tired face.

No. No I didn’t.

Susan also suggested that Sancha needed an interpreter to help her with the papers. I sure hope an interpreter will go to the hospital with her. Can you imagine having some kind of procedure on your most private area and not understanding anything the doctors or nurses say? These refugees have to deal with so many complicated and confusing situations here, but I’m sure health care is probably the most confusing and terrifying of them all. For me, just having minor healthcare situations—a small polyp removed from my cheek, getting a root canal, having a mammogram—are fraught with embarrassment and anxiety.

Again and again I am reminded of my experience last year with an illegal immigrant who was getting assistance from another charitable organization I worked with. I ended up in the exam room with her, the doctor, a resident, and an interpreter while the immigrant had a pelvic exam. I was shocked at how much privacy she had to forgo to receive the healthcare she needed, how easy it was for me, a total stranger, to infiltrate what should be an inviolate space of intimacy. And I was forced to realize again how much I take for granted.

I hope Sancha’s procedure goes well, that she is as healthy and happy as she can be so far from her homeland, amid strangers and strange language.

But most of all, I hope I don’t have to hear any more about her vagina.