I feel a caption competition coming on. Framed by my open thighs, the two women’s faces looked up and laughed.

This check-up Down There was another reminder that internal female furniture requires all manner of routine maintenance to keeps things on an even keel.

Whatever needs to happen, it is important to not mind. All women know that certain milestones in life involve sharing our bodies with numerous healthcare professionals; it is something we just get used to. To be candid, sometimes things can get so complicated between our legs, it is reassuring to know there’s someone who can tell you what’s what. When it comes to routine scans, screens and related jiggery-pokery, the words it’s nothing sinister are as good as sung by a choir of angels.

The sort of medical folk whose career choice has taken them into other people’s nether regions are generally kind and gentle; this does not preclude a convoluted procedure becoming too absorbing to remember that the body part with which they are so engaged still has a person at the other end.

Following a Brief Skirmish with Cancer some years ago, colonoscopies punctuate my year and I am immensely grateful to the highly qualified people in our NHS who find the business end of my body quite so compelling. Occasionally, too compelling.

There is someone attached to that bottom you know and by the way, it is supposed to be a one-way street! The Colo-rectal surgeon in question was introducing into my posterior something necessarily but uncomfortably penetrative – and doing so with unwarranted enthusiasm.  My emphatic outburst caused a cease-fire; he looked up in genuine bafflement …. and apologized.

A couple of months ago I deliberately arranged for both “in and out” clinical interventions to take place within 24 hours of each other; if one’s body is going to be subjected to serial invasion it is better in my view, to focus the activity into a concentrated period of time. When dignity is restored, it does not have to be disrupted again for a while.

There’s a lot to be said for dignity, but the health of one’s internal goings-on is even more important. Whether you like it or not, Sisters take heed: make sure the maintenance of your bits and pieces go hand-in glove (as it were) with a sense of humour.

It’ll be worth it in the end.

(c) Giovanna Forte, 2019