November 15, 2001
  blood & the babe

My doctor's office is very convenient to my apartment in Redwood City, and the reason for this is that this was part of the criteria I used in order to select him. I've never had a family doctor before, partly because us musicians are a hardy lot and can't afford insurance anyway. The whole "you pay us, we'll pay for your surgery" concept took a long time to sink in because, if you really think about it, I mean really, really think about it, it makes about as much sense as asking your parents to bathe for you.

No, there's no point trying to explain to me about how the ins and outs of insurance are important to my well-being. My rational musician mind can't take it. My rational musician mind points out that insurance is expensive, and there's a much better way to deal with medical needs; namely, don't ever get sick.

Did I say 'rational' musician mind? I know there's another word out there that'll fit in the blank so much better. I'll have to think about it.

Oh, right. Cheap. My cheap musician mind.

I have medical insurance now through my company, and only now -- two years after first getting it -- do I start to dimly see the possibilities.

This is the part where I start talking about, you know, the whole female condition thing. The night before last I was up until five a.m., obsessing over the thought that my belly button might be too deep. Oh, I thought blurrily while trying to measure it with a piece of paper and a pencil, around 4:30 a.m. This is PMS.

"You're so silly," the Guy said fondly, if not too intelligently, when I shared this little tidbit with him the next day.

If only he knew how close he came to having his brain extracted through his ear with an icepick.

Male folks, you might want to go away to your happy places now because I'm going to start talking about female stuffs.

No, wait. Come back, male folks. This is good for you. You should know these things.

I've had PMS now for two weeks. Two whole weeks. For me, this isn't a record; in fact, this isn't even tip of the iceburg. However. Two weeks. Of cramps. And, more recently, insomnia.

George Carlin has a monologue in which he comments on how the English language is being used to gradually talk down the ugly things in life until they disappear altogether. The example he uses is Shell Shock, a harsh phrase for an ugly condition. The government started calling it Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. A nicer phrase, with more syllables. No more 'shock,' which was bad because it can be associated with disembowelment, with gushing wounds, with internal injuries. Now it's 'stress,' something that you can get by dropping your Palm Pilot and missing your hairdresser appointment.

In the same light, I think Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is a pathetic attempt by an unsympathetic male supremacy to try and play down the severity of what happens, once a month, to half the human population. Calling the weeks before menstruation 'Pre-Menstrual Syndrome' is like calling death an "Inconvenience." Nowhere in the description is there an indication of the type of experience PMS really is.

Any truly descriptive name would have to include sound effects and psychosomatic correlation. I would pay good money to have all males, at puberty, go through some sort of Clockwork Orange indoctrination. I think it would effectively eliminate all miscommunication between the sexes. No more of this men from mars, women from venus crap. No more burqas and Afghani women dying of medical conditions because they can't get a doctor.

In Yuhri's world, this is how it should be.

When I say 'Pre-Menstrual Syndrome' to a man, he should immediately feel someone plunge the jaws of life through his lower belly into the cage of the pelvis, and start to open.

He should feel someone reach in through the soft flesh of the stomach with a sharpened steel glove, and start to squeeze the bowels.

He should hear the popping of his intestines as the tissue distends with pent-up gas trapped between those fingers, and starts to rip.

He should taste bile in his mouth, from not-quite controlled nausea, and see black spots from the migraine that's rapidly annexing the entire room.

He should be unable to straighten or move quickly, because every draft, no matter how small, causes instant and explosive diarrhea.

He should be able to hear the thoughts of everybody in the room, because they're all chanting the exact same thing and the collective harmony of all those mental vibrations are enough to kill a moose at twenty paces: "Have you gotten fatter in the last two minutes?"

My theory is that this is nature's way of preparing women for childbirth, kind of like the way men are nature's way of preparing women for childcare. Another brilliant idea from the people who brought you the black plague.

So I went to my doctor because my period is acting up again, and this time it occurred to me that a doctor -- ha ha! -- might be able to do something about it.

My period is one of those bizarre cosmic jests that seem to happen to people from time to time, like premature baldness and beer bellies. It goes for months at a time without a hitch, once a month. Then, suddenly, it goes on holiday. Don't ask me where. Four months, five months, six months will pass without a sign of it, and then, bam.

When I say 'bam,' I don't mean a little bam. I mean a bam with conviction, one which involves pints of blood, nonstop, for weeks at a time. My record in that department is two months solid bleeding, two months that could quite possibly have been longer because after the second month, I just stopped counting.

At present I'm in one of my dry spells, which means that the PMS is more severe than usual. "You should menstruate," a friend at work told me, bluntly. "It's good for you."

Since she's a woman and therefore a subject matter expert, I took her at her word and set up an appointment to see my doctor.

My doctor is a very nice man. At least, I think he might be. I've never actually met him. The woman I've met so far has been the very sweet nurse practitioner, who told me in February that I didn't need a pap smear -- don't ask, if you don't know; never had one, so I couldn't tell you -- because I wasn't sexually active.

"She's on pot," my friend said, bluntly. "You're 28. You need to see a gyno."

(It turns out that a gyno isn't a greek sandwich of flavorful lamb's meat with creamy dill sauce in a plump yet supple wrapping. Apparently, that's a gyro. A gyno is a doctor who takes care of female-ish things like, um, female-ish thingies. The not-dangly bits. Who knew?)

My real objection with my doctor's office was, before I went this morning, the fact that they hadn't commented at all on the blood tests they ran on me back in February. According to Stanford University, the blood that I donated to them shortly after was chock full of unhealthy little cholesterol fairies.

Me, I thought that was important, and said so in my meek and ever-so-charming way when I was seeing the nurse practitioner. "Yes, that's right," she said, dismissively. "I'm a little more concerned about your blood sugar level."

My what?

"It's high," she said.

It is?

"We called you to come in and see us after the blood test," she said, kindly.

You did?

"When did you come in, last? Let me see. . . "

February. Thanks for the follow-up work. That's some sharp stuff.

She jotted me down for another blood test, "because you have diabetes in your family, don't you?"

Yes, I do.

She gave me a card for a gyno-something. "You should set up an appointment," she informed me, gravely. "What you're experiencing sounds like a condition called. . . " She started explaining something to me, and I went to my happy place, returning just in time to hear her say the word "ultrasound."

Huh?

"Then we'll be able to check what's going on," she finished, "and whether it's a case of ovarian cysts."

What's that?

"My mother had that," my roommate's friend told me tonight, when I related the story of my doctor's visit with many comical faces and entertaining asides. "She had surgery to have them removed. It was in and out. Nothing to worry about."

Surgery?

"So did my sister," recalled my roommate. "She had surgery for that, too."

Surgery?

With a knife?

Diabetes?

Is this fair to drop on top of someone with PMS?

1:11 am. Time to go measure my belly button again.