You may feel some discomfort

So, I’m calling my gynie’s office because I’m overdue for an annual on my cooch, and as I finished my business and was about to hang up, the receptionist says “Please be aware that the doctor no longer prescribes birth control pills.”

The phone was halfway to the cradle. I pull it back. “What?”

“The doctor no longer prescribes birth control pills.”

“Okaaaay,” I say. I am not concerned because I need a prescription; I no longer take birth control pills, partly because I am too old but also because they may (or may not, depending on which we-don’t-really-give-a-shit-about-women’s-icky-health-problems half-assed theory you subscribe to) exacerbate the symptoms of my uterine fibroid tumors.

I know. Ew. Tumors. I guess I should have given you guys some warning that I was about to drop the misshapen lady parts bomb. So sorry.

“So, we’ll see you 3 weeks from Tuesday,” the nurse says, trying to end the call.

“Wait a minute. What kind of birth control method does she recommend, then?”

“The doctor counsels her patients on the rhythm method.”

I had to quickly check my watch to see what year it was. Had the retrograde policies of the Bush administration caused time to literally run backward, I wondered?

“I see,” I said. It occurred to me that my Latina doctor was a likely Catholic. “And this decision…is it…well, is it based on the doctor’s own personal morality?”

“Yes.”

I was expecting her to sound defensive, but it was actually more like weariness.

“I understand,” I said, and hung up. But readers, I did not understand.

I do not understand.

To tell the truth, my disillusionment with this doctor had begun several years ago. I'd had a myomectomy to remove aforementioned fibroids ten years previously, and they had returned again. Upon learning this, my doctor advised me to get rid of my uterus. Wait, I protested, I’m not ready to give up on the old gal just yet. She’s got a few more years on her.

“You’re what? 42? You don’t really need it anymore,” she said.

Gulp.

“I need it,” I offered, weakly. “I might need it.”

She just looked at me.

“Wait, isn’t there a good chance that my sex drive will disappear if you just yank it?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“I NEED my sex drive.”

She shrugged and made some marks on my chart that no doubt were doctor speak for “delusional old slut,” and left.

The encounter stung. It was bad enough that she considered me past my prime and no longer in need of a good shag, but to deliver the news while I was sitting on that table in that goddamn fucking unflattering neurosis-enabling paper gown, well, let’s just say that that doctor ain’t no kind of sister.

After that, I only saw the nurse practitioner. And the great part is that the nurse was definitely a sister. At every check-up, she would ask me about my fibroids, and I would tell her about my research, and the changes I had made to my diet and how well it was controlling my symptoms, and she would confide a tip from another patient who was also doing what I was doing, and for a while that was fine with me. It felt subversive to be sneaking around the doctor’s back, just me and my uterus hanging around, thumbing our noses at her so-called medical expertise.

But now this. The rhythm method, for fuck’s sake.

I called the office back and cancelled the appointment. Because I remembered, what’s the principal precept of the medical arts?

First, do no harm.

Unless you’re a Catholic, of course, in which case feel free to do all the harm you want while upholding your own personal medieval beliefs about sex not being for pleasure but only to create other Catholics. Feel free to enforce a method that all but guarantees a woman will have more children, no matter what her own personal will may be, or to what extent her own health may necessitate the opposite. And while you’re at it, why not just tell her to put the lime in the coconut, and call you in the morning.

What a piece of shit excuse for a doctor, man. I mean, really. They ought to pull that bitch’s license, or transfer it to some country where women are lucky to even escape puberty with their clitoris still attached.

Yeah, she’d be a radical feminist in the Sudan.

Then, on top of all this, I heard today that the Vatican has suggested that there might be life on other planets. Life made by the one true Catholic God, you understand, but still.

Say what? Aliens from outer space? That’s funny, because I don’t remember that being mentioned in the Bible. Did I skip that part, the part about “Blessed are those from another world, for their proclivity for anal probes shall convey the homosexual fears of delusional rednecks throughout the rural Southern United States”?

So, the Pope is willing to admit that the Bible might have omitted the mention of an entire universe filled with other non-human beings, but women…still not allowed to fuck for fun, eh? Still better to get AIDS than to use a condom, huh? Gals still not worthy to serve in the priesthood, right? And god still hates fags, of course.

Well, fuck that nonsense, and pass the yellow pages. I needs to find me another cooch doc.