In 2006, I was a 23-year-old college graduate. I had my own little apartment in Nashville and was working at my first career gig. It had been four years since my surgeries (yes, two, but that’s another story …) and I no longer had to have those annoying ultrasounds every few months. I had a clean bill of health, a prescription for birth control that would theoretically suppress my ovary, and things were OK.

One night in March of that year, my boyfriend at the time had to put me into a tub of steaming hot water. I knew it the minute it happened … another cyst. It had torqued, causing that gut wrenching pain I new too well.

And it was all my fault.

I guess at 23, I didn’t realize that the birth control was preventing cysts from forming. I was stupid and went off it because Ortho Tri Cyclen is not for everyone. I should have called my gyno for a new ‘script, but kept putting it off until it happened again.

“Hi, I need talk to Dr. P’s nurse, please. I think I have an ovarian cyst,” I said the next morning as I called in to the gynecologist’s office. The nurse came on the line and said, “I need to schedule you for a CT scan first.” I relied incredulously, “Why? I know what it is. I just need an ultrasound.”

“Well, it’s procedure. We have to rule out cancer.”

“I’m sorry, but you have my medical history right there. You know it isn’t cancer. I went off my pills and now I have a cyst. I’m not going for a CT. Forget it. Just schedule the ultrasound.”

“I’ll need to discuss this with Dr. P and call you back,” she said.

Thus began years of doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners trying to circumvent my requests, treating me like I didn’t know my own body, and for all intents and purposes, ignoring my better judgement and intuition. Luckily, I had the best gyno in the world at the time and she scheduled the ultrasound I requested. I have not before or since had someone who took as good a care of me as she did.

“Well, it looks like you have a 4cm cyst on your right ovary. I wish you had called me for new birth control instead of going off it. Here’s a prescription for that and Percocet for the pain. Take it easy for a few weeks, don’t lift anything over 20 lbs and then go in for another ultrasound,” my doctor reported to me in the examination room.

The cyst dissolved within 4 weeks.

Not once did I go off that exact birth control the next seven years.