Kicking Myself

To hear my mother tell it, she was just waiting for me to pop out so that she could leave my two-timing, selfish, excuse for a father. The story goes that I was overdue and had jaundice when delivered, which discolored my newborn skin. So this fool shows up at the hospital takes one look at me in the incubator (which serves to treat the skin discoloration aka Jaundice) and asks if I’m really his, since my skin looks a little dark…

There’s something about women’s health that somehow plays into both her sexuality and gender power relations in a way that men’s health does not.

Lately I’ve had this urge to get trained in midwifery. It probably has to do with hanging out in lots of rural areas where infant mortality rates are high, but it’s more than that. I used to think that women midwives in the delivery room had to do with Victorian modesty. But now I think it had something to do with a woman’s trust and camaraderie when it comes to our bodies.

"Corruptio optimi pessima” is Latin for “corruption of the best is worst.” The definitive and essential role our bodies play in our relationships to men can be extraordinary. But as the saying goes, it can also be the most terrible if corrupted because of its very extraordinariness. It’s like the tradition of hysteria in the 17th century being a supposedly female disease, diagnosed of course by male doctors. Women’s health seems to have a history of mystery and misdiagnoses by men. Not just doctors, but disgruntled spouses as well.

One summer I hung out with some rural health clinics in Nicaragua. The American trained doctor, used to emphasize how important it was that she see the women alone, without their partners for medical visits. She said the women wouldn’t or rather couldn’t tell her everything if their jealous and often abusive husbands were present. But it wasn’t just rural Nicaragua, the same was true she said of at-risk populations in her practice in the states. Moreover, in immigrant communities in the states it’s most likely the man who speaks better English and thus requests to be present on his partner’s behalf in the hospital in order to translate. But as you can imagine, she said that if the relationship was in anyway abusive he could completely manipulate the conversation and prevent her from getting help or even receiving the care she needed. Incredible, right?

Well, here I am with an ongoing health concern in the middle of South America, with my South American boyfriend and what do I do? I let him come into the doctor’s office with me. Not just into the waiting room, but into the fricking consultation where the doctor is explaining my lab results. And moreover, his reason for accompanying me was, “just in case I didn’t understand something”. I’m so mad I can hardly forgive myself. No I’m not in an abusive relationship, but yes he did ask me something stupid afterwards.

Uugghh I cant even be angry with him, because I knew better, why did I let him come in??? It’s my body; it’s my health.

Here’s hoping the women out there, our women of solidarity, will forgive me and invite me back into their fold.