A Trip to the Doc’s

I had my “lady parts” visit today– I’ve got a healthy family history, and with the exception of the weight I’m relatively healthy, so I get these about every two years.  In spite of the fact that Kaiser has been the closest thing to socialized medicine until the ACA, it’s gotten really human in the last ten years. I’ve had the same Ob/Gyn since I was pregnant with ZoomBoy, and she’s great.

Really great– kind, young(er than me), stunningly pretty, and just everything you ever wanted to see in a successful doctor. She looks at pictures of my kids, asks about the career, tells me about her own kids (and yes–I saw her pregnant, in a sort of amusing turn of events.)

We had a good talk about people caring for each other, and how it’s the reason we’re here. When that stops happening, we’re doomed.

I got a hug (in my circus tent and all) as she left, and I realized that hey, this doc appointment that every woman dreads was really not so bad.

I went down for my mammogram, and the woman there was VERY young, cute as a pixie, and while we mushed my boobs between the plates for the pictures, we talked about crocheting and how her daughter had learned how to do it, but was having difficulty because she’d forgotten parts, at six years old. The little girl is extremely OCD, and the crocheting was the only thing that seemed to help her relax, so I gave the lab tech Babetta’s address, and told her that if she brought her daughter in with a problem, they could probably help her.

And I got a hug from her, too (while yet again, wearing a circus tent. The hugs were great– the circus tents, oi!)

Anyway–

It was a lovely visit, with friendly people who did their job competently and wanted what was best for my body. I discussed weight loss with my doctor, and she told me I was the healthiest “large” patient she had (I was proud of that–don’t know why) and generally, I felt proactive about my health and happy with the medical profession at large.

Of course, all of this was because Mate and I could afford health insurance.

We couldn’t always.

When I got pregnant with Big T, we had none. We had to pledge a lot of money we didn’t have to a barely competent asshole just to get prenatal care. So, you know, debt. I GOT health insurance when I got hired, but the laws protecting women from discrimination weren’t in place then, and I was promptly fired at the semester when they realized I was pregnant, and then fired again from another school when child care caused me to call in sick too many times, and banned from the district at the end because I was just too much trouble.

And then we had no health  insurance, and I got pregnant with Chicken.  (Not that I regretted that, even when it happened. But there was definitely a cause/effect thing there.)

Had to get a welfare doctor then– and she was nice, but damned condescending, and everybody in the hospital ignored me about pretty much everything including how far along in my labor I was when I walked in. (Oh, you’re almost completely dilated? Well good for you. We had no idea you were that strong. We’re so impressed. Erg.)  They kicked me out of the hospital 14 hours after Chicken was born. For men who think, “Well, suck it up, buttercup, that’s just what happens and you need to be tough about it!” keep in mind that if they had done that after we had my third baby, he would have died of SIDS the night we brought him home, because his blood sugar dropped twelve hours after he was born and he went unresponsive. Had to feed him through a tube in the nose, which, by the way, if we hadn’t had health insurance, we would still be paying for while we raised eight kids in a two bedroom apartment.

Of course we were lucky by then.

We had health insurance.

But if we hadn’t had it, ZB wouldn’t have made it.

I could go on and on and on–but I’ve done that here before.

I just wanted to say for the record I really appreciate my health care professionals, with all of my heart.

And that makes me so angry– so VERY FUCKING ANGRY–at what Cheetoh McShitGibbon has done in office during the last two days to make sure that ONLY women with money will get decent health care again.

Because I’ve been the woman without money, and I’ve seen it from the other side, and it sucks ass.  It is dangerous for women, it is dangerous for children, and it feeds into a HORRIBLY unhealthy society.

And I know how important it is to my health that I have access to women’s health now, and I”m so grateful for it, I can’t even tell you. I can’t articulate how awesome it is to not have to worry about it, and how human I felt to have health care professionals I trusted, and who lived in my community, take care of me.

And I can’t even BRAIN how puckered angry white men think it’s okay to stick their grimy unwelcome fists into women’s vaginas and grope around a little and tell them why they have no rights to birth control or prenatal care or mammograms or any of those things because seriously, why do women need that shit anyway?

Who needs dying white men, flesh sagging from their gin blossoms, to tell us why we don’t?

Forget “punch a Nazi in the face” day– it’s time to kick a senator in the wiener. Those assholes can’t get enough of OUR reproductive rights–I think it’s only fair.