Cystoscopy; too humiliating, but need it (probably)

A bit of background I've been suffering with a few issues over a number of years' that can broadly be described as down below, urinary changes/ problems and then (after a few years') pain upon ejaculation which happened for about two weeks' then stopped but concerned me enough to see my doctor which is a very rare event. (I now have a pain in my lower left abdomen). I never go there because I hate it so much, if I could have avoided this total humiliation I would have but this seemed too serious to legitimately ignore. There are only a small number of things I was willing to endure this torture for and one was the prospect of dying, and the other was not being able to get an erection. I did not know if this thing, what ever it was, came into either category. After explaining to the new young female doctor, who looked so young I thought she should still be in school, I felt about one inch tall. She looked about 16. She asked me every question (almost) I didn't really want to answer. Can this get any worse I thought to myself, probably not, but I was wrong.

Doctors and me have some history which perhaps informs my opinion of them and also perhaps my attitude, and that is that they always get it wrong. That is tolerable if annoying, no-one is perfect. What I cannot cope with though is the embarrassment. The fact that I'm embarrassed about the fact that I'm embarrassed, and the fact that they apparently could not care less how I feel. I need doctors with some human kindness, some empathy, same with nurses too. I have yet to find any.

So long story short, two years later ( yes that is accurate, I told you how useless they are when it comes to me) they have decided they want me to have a cystoscopy. My problem is I am concerned about the emotional and psychological damage this will do to me. I cannot think of anything more degrading and humiliating than getting raped up the penis. What makes everything much worse, is getting raped up the penis whilst disinterested uncaring medical people carry on as if nothing bad is happening in a vain attempt to normalise the abnormal, pretending that absolutely no-one is ever remotely embarrassed, humiliated or degraded by this procedure. Why do they do that? It is unforgivable and disrespectful. Why can't they show a shred of humanity? Would that kill them? I expressed my concerns to the nurse. There are worse things she claimed. Well not for me there isn't.

So I am in a quandary; my logical mind is telling me you need to get to the bottom of this, and I know that I do, but with my problem is two fold, my emotional part knows how damaging this will be for me and I fear that my mental health will suffer significantly, it already is. But can I get to the bottom of this another way? And because they are so utterly useless and I have no faith or trust in them, I am concerned that I will be having to do this or something very similar many times, but worse many times unnecessarily because of how utterly useless they are, they seem completely unwilling to take my emotional distress into account at all. I don't want to be sleep walked in this test, then that test, then another test all of which are humiliating, embarrassing and degrading. I told the nurse if I do this, I only want to it once, she could not hold my gaze which didn't bode well. At every turn the more I ask the more trust disappears. Getting information from them seems to be on a if you don't ask us directly we won't tell you basis. I feel like I am dragging information out of unwilling participants. They don't feel embarrassed and basically think we have no right therefore to feel anything different. There seems to be a conspiracy of pretending no-one feels humiliated by this loss of privacy and dignity and they invite the patient to be a co-conspirator in this code of silence. I am refusing to facilitate this horse manure. Any ideas anyone?

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