Women’s health care is my number one social cause which perhaps doesn’t come as a surprise. Perturbed is a choice word for my feelings around women’s health care. A recent, tiny interaction is the spark of this post. An MD I follow on Substack posted a note: “What are you looking forward to in August?” With sex on the brain, as usual, I replied: “My annual pelvic exam” with an eye roll emoji. (I’m reluctantly trying to participate in the social aspect of Substack, and perhaps I should have refrained from using sarcasm, or at least written something more sincere.) I did get a polite, ironic “Haha so fun” in reply with the cry face and sweating emoji in return. A perfectly acceptable response! It is a sucky appointment with a lot of variables that can make it suck even more. But why are two health care providers complacent –even complicit– with the agony of the yearly pelvic? Why commiserative joking instead of lobbying?
Always with the questions, Sanna. Why must you ask such things? Well— reasons! First, the fun stuff.
I love HRT. Despite my education and training I did not know I was being flung around like a rag doll by my hormones, either in my childbearing years or in perimenopause. After wearing the patch for a couple days I noticed that the constant, buzzing, vague anxiety that followed me for ages had completely dissipated. I felt sweet and soft. My overall wellness only improved more over time. I feel great physically and mentally most of the time. The realization that a lot of my issues were hormonal astonished and demoralized me, and I felt for other women stuck on the mental health cycle of menstruation. (Or pregnancy FFS!!) I also feel for women who are unable to use HRT and want to. Estrogen and progesterone replacement was just as life-changing as learning I have autism. I do LOVE my current NP. I have a long history of shitty experiences with OB-GYNs. I have had several, if few, good experiences with providers in that specialty, so I am not making generalizations, it’s just been my luck of the draw. It’s not always been attentive care and wellness. I will tell my reproductive health story to anyone who will listen.
“This is your body, you decide what happens with it.
You are right to take care of it.”
It is worth mentioning that the first difficult situation Finn and I went through had to do with my hang up with women’s health. We were still very new, together only a month, when we devoted a weekend to introducing our people to each other, and we both got social fatigue. By Sunday evening we’d about had it, and it was too much for us to even assemble the nice dinner ingredients we’d planned to cook. He made an offhand remark (I don’t recall exactly what it was) about women and emotions and it was like someone shot a starter pistol. I was off and running. I did not shut up, and I got more serious but more emphatic with each leg of the tirade. I am sure it was startling. My soapbox got taller and stronger the more I spoke. I was like a self-winding watch, stridently ticking. I detailed my painful treatment at the hands of male doctors as well as my bloody obstetrical and gynecological horrors. I contrasted it to the experience of men who are always taken seriously about their pain. I lost sight of my audience and went ON. Finally I brought the diatribe to a close, and man-oh-man, I saw him try to take it on, but he was just spent. He started full-on crying and apologizing until we retreated to the couch, comforted each other, and fell asleep. We learned a lot that weekend. I’ll never ease up. Still, change happens one man at a time, and I will be god-damned if I am not using the voice I have.
I bring this up to demonstrate how fun I am to be around. I’m one of those socially abrasive autistic people who sometimes can’t leave well enough alone. Do you still like me?
I do the reading– on Reddit, that is. I’ve been down the rabbit hole of AskReddit’s “Tell me your worst experience with an OB-GYN doctor…” It’s awful out there. Anecdotally, many women have had horrifying experiences in the stirrups that make mine look like a stubbed toe. Even with the callousness I’ve experienced on the other side of the drape, the things I’ve read are shocking and infuriating.
The certainty of it is– we can’t have fun, connective, healthy sex without the edification of our individual sexual health.
And, here we are.
In knowing myself as an autistic person, a professional provider of patient care, a middle aged woman, and a sexual being– none of these things mutually exclusive– there are so many angles and layers I see personally with what is wrong in women’s health that it’s like women’s lib never happened.
I can only paint in broad strokes. My history of having female body parts is a memoir all its own, and so is hers, and hers, and hers. Each woman has a story about being a woman under the care of a doctor. Each woman has faced unconcern, harm, or prejudice in their health care at some point and that has affected them, and maybe even changed them.
“This is your body, you decide what happens with it.
You are right to take care of it.”
The certainty of it is– we can’t have fun, connective, healthy sex without the edification of our individual sexual health. Even in the States, there are communities and cultures that don’t know what that is like, and in some places, the opportunities are disappearing.
My flippant eyeroll about my yearly checkup and my righteous indignation for the care I am able to obtain are unbecoming of a person of my position; if totally understandable. I am not excused from working to make things better. The message I received on my first trip to the nonprofit sex clinic at age 15 was, “This is your body, you decide what happens with it. You are right to take care of it.”
That was 35 years ago. That message must not disappear.
Stay sexy–
Sanna