Is pelvic exam reliable?
SOUTHERN DIVA06-10-2003, 08:10 PMI am a "worry wart",my gyno knows this and thank God he does not laugh at me! I saw him last week,the third time in less than 3 months and he did another pelvic exam and assured me 100% that my ovaries were so small "he could barely feel them".He knows that I have been obsessed with ovarian cancer since a sonogram last year showed a "small 2cm cyst" on my ovary.He has been very kind to me to help me to quit worrying.Should I just take his word for it that he does not feel an enlarged ovary or a pelvic mass?klayr06-11-2003, 05:31 PMHi! If you are worried about yourself, and you have symptoms that cause you to feel that something might get by an ordinary exam, then why don't you ask for an intravaginal ultrasound? This is painless, and pretty effective for taking a good look at the ovaries. But it seems that if he can't feel them, and he would be pretty experienced, then you may be just overcautious. If there are no symptoms, try not to worry yourself into an early grave. Millions of women, literally, get small cysts on their ovaries regularly. Cysts can appear and disappear during the normal course of a woman's childbearing cycle of life. But, if you have good insurance and don't mind putting yourself through all this, put your mind at ease. You're certainly not doing yourself any harm by being checked thoroughly.