by

The Primrose Path

Age is sometimes mysterious, isn’t it? Despite the experience and occasional brush with wisdom I have encountered, I am still a child in many ways. Naïve -not so much about things I have encountered in my drive through life, but more about those on streets I have not visited. Addresses in the shadows.

I suppose there will always be issues that will never spring to mind in our normal passage through the years and yet, in retrospect, one wonders how they were missed. Or why. What, for example, happens to different populations as they age? And who do we get to care for those who have chosen -or been forced- to walk the darker paths, then fallen neglected and forgotten by the wayside, too old to re-offend? Should we care for those who flout our laws and reject the duty to conform? Are we a family, or just a collection of intolerant strangers easily offended and quick to turn away?

Imponderables, to be sure, and yet, like it or not, there are needs that must be met… by someone anyway. I was intrigued by an article in the BBC News about aging prostitutes in Mexico City: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38677679  One of their members opened a retirement facility for them.

I must admit, that the plight of aging sex workers had never really occurred to me. I’m not sure what I thought would happen as they got old, although, as a gynaecologist, I was certainly aware of their life style risks; their need for consultation in the Emergency Department was a regular and frequent occurrence whenever I was on call. For some reason, I’m reminded of that quote of Queen Katharine buried deep in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: ‘Like the lily, that once was mistress of the field and flourish’d, I’ll hang my head and perish.’ Is that how they end their days…? I hope not.

But a retirement home –how perfect! The social safety net in Mexico is likely not as comprehensive as that in Canada, and yet even here, I’m not aware of any such facility. Indeed, the oldest profession has undergone other, more callous impediments as I noted in a 2014 blog on prostitution laws: https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2014/06/12/prostitution-laws/  So perhaps it might be asking too much to wonder if such a facility might be in the offing -if not governmentally sponsored, then perhaps privately funded. Or better still, a legal adoption of  something like the New Zealand model might discourage exploitation and even offer salaries and, who knows, pensions…? Comfort for their end of days?

*

I do not ordinarily sit in malls; I do not ordinarily go to malls, for that matter, but sometimes circumstances foster unexpected opportunities. I was tired that day –tired of fighting through Friday crowds in search of things I probably didn’t need, or at least could likely find with a little effort somewhere else. I had just decided to look for a place to rest and collect my thoughts, when I saw a woman check her watch and stand to leave an uncomfortable-looking wooden seat near where the tide of people was sweeping me. I immediately swam over and moored before the woman right behind me could claim it for herself.

The seat was one of four that served as a kind of breakwater for the waves of people flowing down the shop-lined banks in confused eddies. Bolted to the floor, they were arranged in a little circle, presumably to facilitate conversation, but only two of the occupants seemed to know each other. They were deep in conversation so even an exchange of pleasantries seemed inappropriate, but just before I closed my eyes, I managed to catch their attention and smile at them. In the seat beside me was an old man who also smiled, but seemed more preoccupied with his watch than anything else.

The women were quite old and both looked as if they’d seen better days. Although their clothes were clean and obviously worn with an attempt at style, I could see fraying at the hems, and areas where the patterns were disrupted by attempts at repair. Both their faces were wrinkled, as much by life as age, I suspected, and the one directly across from where I sat, seemed hollow around her cheeks and gummed her words through sparsely distributed teeth. Short and gaunt, she sat proud and straight in her chair, however, her long, greying hair swept back in an elegant ponytail that danced each time she talked. She had dressed that day in a green, fading sweater and black jeans that seemed a bit too large, so the cuffs were carefully rolled to matching folds.

The other was a larger woman with short, ash-white hair that she had scrunched under a blue baseball cap that had some sort of a truck logo on its front. She was dressed in a red and white flower print dress which seemed to hang shapelessly below a tattered and faded nylon jacket that had probably once been totally black. At her feet was a big, stained cloth shopping bag that bulged oddly in places with items too irregular to be just clothes.

Friendly strangers, they both smiled back at me before resuming their conversation.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax into the wooden slats, but their words kept floating over to me during lulls in the storm of voices and accidental elbows hurrying past me. I could tell it was an unsafe anchorage at best.

“Haven’t seen you for a while. You still working, Ethel?” It must have been the pony-tailed woman, because her words seemed strangely distorted and her lips smacked together a little as she spoke.

A gaggle of children passed nearby so I missed some of the response. “… men anymore, Rita…”

“Yeah, I guess, eh?” But I didn’t think Rita sounded very sure. “You still on the…” A demonic laugh surfaced in the crowd for a moment then faded along with Rita’s words.

“Yeah,” Ethel replied. “Hard to get off though, eh?”

I opened my eyes to get a little more comfortable on my seat, and saw Rita nodding in agreement. “Hang out in the same place?”

Ethel shrugged as I closed my eyes again. “They know me there,” she answered.

I imagined Rita nodding in agreement. “Mmmh,” I heard.

School must have ended for lunch, because a group of noisy teenagers rambled past, joking and poking each other. “What shelter you going to nowadays?” Ethel’s words caught my attention, even amidst the confusion of teenage jests and I opened my eyes, pretending to adjust my position again.

I could see the indecision on Rita’s face, and her lips moved as she considered her answer. “Used to go to the one on Main…”

“Yeah, me too,” Ethel agreed, glancing at her. “Got assaulted there, though, so I sometimes try the Sally Ann…”

“Mmmh.”

“What about now, Rita?” She adjusted her baseball cap as she spoke. “Where you headed tonight…?” She sounded suspicious. They were clearly not good friends –just acquaintances, perhaps, who’d found themselves in adjoining seats to shelter from the weather for a while.

Rita stared at Ethel for a moment, obviously uncertain how to answer. Then she ordered her eyes to scan the passing crowd. “Found a new place. Some of the girls got together…” But it wasn’t the noise of passing voices that ended her words.

Ethel tried to find out more, but Rita suddenly stood and waved, as if she recognized someone in the crowd, and dived into a particularly noisy wave and disappeared.

Ethel sighed and then gathered up her things and melted into a similar eddy going another direction. Despite her weight, she seemed frail and aged. Her movements were no longer fluid, her gait was unbalanced and she hobbled with a decided limp. But as she disappeared, her eyes brushed mine -by mistake, I thought at first, but when I remembered it later, I wondered if it had just been habit. A desperate plea for another friend –however temporary.

 

 

 

 

by

What We Value

I think it’s about time I revisited the concept of ‘disability’, both in its description and in society at large. It seems to me that the word itself is too value-laden to accept at face value. We are all disabled in one way or another and yet we may not see ourselves like that. And why should we? Disability, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder –or in this case, the beheld. I first wrote about this several years ago: https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2012/08/31/antenatal-genetic-testing/

The concept is embedded in context, and like two colours mixed together, can result in something totally different. Totally unexpected –even if innocently mixed. I was reminded of this by another  BBC article on Down Syndrome and antenatal screening: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37500189  Once again there was an acknowledgment that ‘”The whole essence of a good screening programme is the counselling you have before you even have the blood test done or the scan done,” says Alan Cameron, foetal medicine consultant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow.’ And, of course, ‘[…] all experts agree that the way a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome is presented can influence whether parents choose to continue with the pregnancy.’ Even unconscious biases affect the way counsellors present the evidence, and none of us is free of these, I fear. We are all tinted by the colours that surround us, after all.

And I suspect there’s no better place to experience colours than riding in a bus.

I happened to be sitting behind two young women, both of whom were carrying their babies in those little vertical hammocks on their chests that tend to wax and wane in popularity. They evidently were strangers, but as newly minted parents, they seemed anxious to brag and peek at each other’s baby.

“She’s gorgeous,” said the one sitting beside the window, glancing at the closed-eyed head breathing quietly in its tight little container on her seat-mate’s chest. I’m not sure how she ascertained the sex so easily, but maybe new mothers are more adept at that than the rest of us.

“Thank you,” said the other, risking a peek at the sleeping baby beside her. “So is yours,” she cooed, cuing a smile and a flutter of her eyes.

“His name is Joshua,” the window lady responded, as if it was essential to establish that from the start. “Names are important,” she added, more seriously. “It means ‘God is generous’, or something…” To be honest, she didn’t sound too certain.

Aisle-woman was silent for a moment. I couldn’t see her face, obviously, and it might have been rude to look, but I thought it seemed an awkward response. “That’s nice,” she said in a carefully neutralized tone, but that kind of thing is hard to determine when you’re sitting behind someone in a noisy bus. “My little sweetie is called Elizabeth…” I could hear the hesitation in her voice. “I don’t actually know what it means,” she admitted.

“It means God is satisfaction, I think,” window-woman said without a pause. “We were going to name him that –if he’d been a girl, I mean.”

“Oh.” Aisle-woman seemed stumped about how to reply, but her neck-language suggested she was none too comfortable with the God references in both names.

They were silent for a few streets, and then, window-woman, unable to contain herself, peeked at the other baby. “They all look so peaceful when they’re asleep, don’t they?”

The woman nodded and felt forced to reciprocate with a fleeting inspection of Joshua as he snored. I assume it was snoring, at any rate, because it was rhythmic and his mother didn’t seem to be doing it. Elizabeth’s mother reached over and loosened Joshua’s hammock with a finger, thinking that might have been the cause. It was an innocent gesture, meant to be helpful –a mother’s instinct in action- but Joshua’s mother immediately grabbed the offending finger.

“He’s okay,” she said, embarrassed at her protective reflex. “Joshua’s just a noisy sleeper, that’s all…”

Elizabeth’s mother stole another glance at Joshua and I could see the edge of her smile, even from behind. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere,” she said, and adjusted Elizabeth’s little hoodie, just in case. “I thought he looked a little puffy… I wondered if maybe it was the hammock.”

Joshua’s mother forced a smile and then turned to look out of the window. “He isn’t puffy; he looks just like yours,” she said in a soft little voice that I found hard to hear.

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth’s mother said, touching the other’s shoulder gently. “I… I thought I was helping…”

When Joshua’s mother turned her head to respond, I could see a tear rolling down her cheek. She stroked Josh’s little cheek and the snoring stopped for a second or two. “They told us he’d be…different,” she said slowly, “But he’s really a very good baby, you know…” She stroked Joshua again when he seemed to be rousing, and he immediately relaxed and made some sucking sounds with his lips. “I know he meant well, and everything, but the doctor always looked so sad when he saw me during the pregnancy. You know, like he was trying to console me or something…”

I could see a little tear beginning to form in the eyes of Elizabeth’s mom now. “I’m so sorry,” she said as softly as she could over the rattle of the bus. “I didn’t mean…”

But the window-lady had already pulled the cord for the next stop and was starting to rise from her seat. “God really has been generous to us both,” I heard her say as she reached out and gently stroked her neighbor’s baby as she passed. “It’s just that I’m always going to be reminded of that, I guess…”

She hurried through the opened door and I could see her standing out there as the vehicle pulled away, caressing little Joshua but otherwise not moving… As if maybe the answer was another bus…

 

 

 

by

The Kingdom of the Blind

 

Sometimes, after waking up from a troubled sleep, it occurs to me that I live in a world to which I have become so accustomed that I wander down its streets like a horse with blinders. I see those things at which I am pointed and accept what I am told about the rest –even about the other horses… And they, like me, process their separate realities as if they were representative. Common grounds. All, no doubt convinced of the uniqueness -the appropriateness- of their own interpretations. Certain that what they see is what we all see –should see- otherwise we are mistaken and groping. Remember, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

But we miss a lot unless we stand back and consider what passes for reality. And why. The other day I was listening to an archival podcast from BBC 4 entitled Body Count Rising –a thought-provoking and insightful documentary about how we have come to watch- and accept- crime programs that seem to glorify violence against women. Rape, murder, abuse –all common themes that, had they no fascinated audience, no prurience, would never have gained the popularity they seem to enjoy: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wtggz

To me, only an occasional crime show adherent, the trend was largely invisible. And yet, as a man, maybe even a steady diet of such programs would have slipped past without a comment. Without a conscious recognition that perhaps the overly realistic depictions of female abuse, the preponderance of rape as an important component of the plot, and the salacious depiction of the female corpse was actually a not-so-covert titillation. A not-so-disguised form of necrophilia.

Another component of the podcast documentary that I had not considered until then –and one that I found powerfully compelling- was not so much the increasing demand for these kinds of stories, but rather the effects on the female actors who had to play the role of the victims. I suspect that most of us become so enmeshed in the storyline, so enveloped in the plot that we forget that to be convincing, the actor has to become the character she is playing. Those kinds of victim roles must be devastating -especially when the story purports to depict what is actually happening out there in real life to real women. And yet for the rest of us, we experience it vicariously and from the safety of our living rooms.

Where does the fault lie? The documentary makes an honest attempt to dissect it –from the writers who decide what species of story is saleable, to the networks and producers who pander to audience demand, and even to the actors who, despite their reluctance to glorify the ugliness they are asked to portray, dare not risk declining or criticizing the role for fear of subsequent unemployment… Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t another form of abuse. More subtle perhaps, more deniable, and yet one more gossamer-thin thread in a web of denigration so easily ignored in our society. So readily dismissed. So invisible…

We are all to blame, aren’t we? There are blind spots in each of our lives.

I walked into in a crowded restaurant for lunch the other day, and the only table left was uncomfortably close to one where a man and a woman sat arguing. To be fair, they were initially discreet about it, never raising their voices, nor gesturing suggestively with their cutlery, but nevertheless, I felt almost as if I was a guest in their kitchen and forced to witness a family squabble.

“… Whatever!” the woman hissed sotto voce, as she glanced at me sitting so close to them. She was young –maybe in her mid-twenties- and looked as if she had just come from work. Dressed in a grey skirt and a white now-creased blouse, her auburn hair once pinned on top of her head, escaped strand by strand as she tossed her eyes back and forth from the leftovers on her plate to her partner’s face.

He was probably in his forties, and dressed in a brown suit with a red tie loosened at the neck. Staring intently at the woman, a patient smile tattooed on his face, he was leaning forward on the table when I sat down. He made several desultory attempts to touch her arm, but she withdrew each time. “Sheila asks for it, though, Janice…”

Evidently, this was not the response Janice wanted to hear and she sat up stiffly on her chair and glared at him. “Asks for it! What kind of an animal are you, Jeff?”

“Come on, Jan. Get off your high horse!” he sat back on his chair and his facial tattoo expanded sardonically. Cruelly. “She flirts with every man in the office… Including me,” he added, as if this proved his point.

“Flirts?” Janice’s voice rose unintentionally, but she glanced my way and subdued the rest of her words. “Sheila is just friendly; that’s how she interacts with people.” She shook her head sadly, and several more strands of hair tumbled to her shoulder and danced as she spoke. “You’re so shallow!”

“Friendly is one thing –you’re friendly, but you don’t stand as close as she does when you talk. And you don’t start fondling people to make a point. Sheila bores into your face with her eyes, like she wants to peer inside, or something…”

“You mean she actually listens when you talk…?”

Jeff frowned at the remark and shook his head. “No… it’s more than just listening, Jan. It’s… seductive.”

The skin on Jan’s face tightened, and her eyes tore a strip off his face. “So that’s why Jason gropes her every chance he gets? Because she’s asking for it?”

“Gropes her?” His voice rose unpleasantly loud and people at the nearby tables turned to see who was yelling. He dropped his eyes to his plate again, and lowered his voice. “Janice you’re so bloody naïve! He’s just responding to her. Stimulus-response –it’s not groping! You make it sound so… so damned lewd.”

Janice’s eyes grew to the size of the plate in front of her and her face reddened as the veins on her neck grew fat and swollen. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before answering. “Suppose Sheila kept grabbing his ass –what would you call that? Or his crotch…? I saw him trying to finger her in the corner, Jeffrey!!”

Jeff rolled his eyes and guffawed. “He’s just playing the game, Jan… And anyway, Jason wouldn’t do that unless she was okay with it.” He toyed with the bit of food left on his plate and then chose a large, dripping piece and put it in his mouth –but slowly and carefully. I could tell he thought he was being seductive.

From where I sat, I could see Jan’s fists opening and closing. She seemed momentarily speechless, although I suppose she was actually trying to calm herself down before she exploded. “Jeffrey, you’re missing the point!” The words came out between clenched teeth, her eyes locked on his. “Jason is her boss, for god’s sake! She feels she has to take it…” She tried to soften her face for a moment as she explained the obvious, but it was a losing battle. “Don’t you understand…?” she said quietly while shaking her head. I could tell she wasn’t far from tears.

But Jeff’s face stayed blank. It was as if Jan hadn’t explained anything. “Sheila could just tell him to stop, if she wanted to.” It was so obvious to him.

Jan glanced at her watch and stood up. “I’ve got to get back now, Jeffrey…” He smiled again and pointed to some food still left on his plate. “Wait till I finish this, Jan,” he said, and not kindly. It was an order, really, so she sat down again and leashed her eyes obediently.

But not before they strayed briefly to my face in apology –a silent recognition of the way things were. An invisible shrug.

 

by

Life’s Like That

Why is Life so hard to define? When I was in school, it was easy –as mentioned in a BBC article on the topic: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170101-there-are-over-100-definitions-for-life-and-all-are-wrong -Life was MRS GREN (Metabolism, Reproduction, Sensitivity, Growth, Respiration, Excretion, and Nutrition). That’s all you needed for the exam –although I’m glad they never asked for an explanation of Sensitivity. But times change, and as do definitions, so by the time I was in university, I was confused. Every faculty had its own perspective –chemists defined in terms of chemicals, biologist preferred DNA, and physicists were partial to the dynamics of molecular properties that bypassed structural components in favour of information transfer.

Me? I wandered around a fair amount in my undergraduate years before I ended up in Medicine so, already rainbow-hued, I opted for a just-right-baby-bear definition -not too much of anything. By then, I understood that Life was an amalgam –but the product and not the recipe. The final taste, and not the way the ingredients are cooked. Telos, I suppose, rather than methodos– words sufficiently nebulous as to dissolve in most of the more erudite proposals. To me, Life is a story – scilicet, a spirit-  and one whose progress is tied to the outcome. We humans are requisite classifiers and groupers –itself a story- and we thereby miss the uniqueness of entity, the magic of identity; for us, something is either alive or not. Black or white. It’s an important distinction to be sure, but as I said, it misses the pungency of the flavour. The excitement of the effect. The Proustian Phenomenon of the madeleine biscuit soaked in tea… My route explains nothing, I’ll concede, and yet somehow, it’s what makes it Life, and not something else.

But I was always hopeless at philosophy, and despite my zeal for it, perhaps wisely accepted parental advice and wandered off into Medicine and eventually a career as an obstetrician/gynaecologist. I suspect they were concerned that otherwise I might end up living with them at home.

From time to time, however, I am still tempted to wax lyrical on Life with the occasional patient who seems to require some additional prodding with regard to their own. I can’t say I’ve achieved any truly publishable results, but the process is nonetheless enjoyable for me on those otherwise interminably complaint-ridden days that crop up from time to time.

It usually requires a stimulus –an opportunity when my input would not be construed as an imposition on their time with me.

Janet, for example. She was a forty-one year old woman who had pursued her own career as a lawyer at the apparent expense of a stable relationship. Intelligent, and attractive, she had finally ‘decided to accede to an intimacy request’ from an acquaintance –that’s how she put it- and when she had first made the appointment had wanted some advice as to how to avoid pregnancy. Her would-be partner was an older man who had not felt comfortable using condoms however. So he hadn’t. And she was. Not only that, but she was confused about it.

“Doctor, I’m almost forty-two years old, and despite the occasional ‘dalliance’ I’ve never been able to become pregnant…” She stared at me like I was somehow to blame for the vagaries and vicissitudes that had befallen her.

I could almost see the quote marks around her word ‘dalliance’. “You said ‘able to become pregnant’, Janet. Were you trying?”

She shook her head almost before my question reached her, but I could tell by her expression that she wasn’t sure. “Life is such a precious thing… I’d want to be sure about everything…”

“Like…?”

“Like whether I could care for it. Whether I would regret whatever decision I made about a pregnancy I hadn’t planned.” She didn’t even mention what effect the father might have on the process. “So…” she thought about it for a second. “…So I suppose I’m happy I didn’t have to make that decision before…”

“And now…?”

She shrugged and sent her eyes, like beggars, to ask my face for something –wisdom, maybe; suggestions, at least. “I mean, what are my chances, doctor?”

“Chances?”

“You know, that I won’t miscarry anyway. Remember, I’m forty-one now… And there’s also a risk of genetic malfeasance, isn’t there?”

Even though I have many lawyers as patients, I’d never heard the risks of pregnancy in an older mother put quite like that… I’m definitely in the pro-choice camp, as she well knew, so I realized she wouldn’t think I was trying to sway her ultimate decision no matter what I said. But still… “We can do the usual prenatal testing to identify any genetic problems beforehand, Janet. And yes, miscarriages are more common with pregnancies in older mothers…”

Her eyes grasped at the hems of mine like supplicants. “And if I were your daughter…?” I knew I had to be careful then -she was asking for an opinion, albeit framed as a personal one.

I sighed and sat back in my  chair. “A new life is a new story, Janet –a bit of yours, a bit of the father’s- but at this stage, most of it is still an idea somewhere. It doesn’t have to get written to qualify –we all have ideas inside when we stop and think about them. We write down some of them, I suppose but sometimes even then, we just can’t get the wording right. Or the idea, once on paper, doesn’t seem what we thought. Remember, a story is no less a story for not being completed, and no less a creation for not being read… But sometimes, you just have to take the chance that you’re on to something.”

Her eyes flew away and settled on her lap for a moment. “You’d make a great lawyer, doctor,” she said, with a mischievous smile, her eyes back on mine once more. “Obfuscation is something they just can’t teach…”

I’m not sure she followed my argument so I risked a little smile. “Isn’t it what you do when there really is no case to be made beyond a reasonable doubt?”

She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “I don’t take cases like that anymore.”

I suspected she hadn’t this time, either.

 

 

 

by

Trolling for a Cause

Okay, full disclosure: in my day, ‘trolling’ was either dropping a baited fishing line in the water behind the boat as you cruised, or watching out for Billy Goat Gruff villains under the next bridge. I didn’t realize just how much I was in need of a more recent update. I mean why does everything now seem to have an online reference? A diktat. That which was once perfectly happy as a denotative word, complete with papers as an official definition, has since wandered onto the wild side beyond the tracks and reinvented itself as a ‘connote’ –or whatever the noun for its once respectable verb might be. I suppose I could look upon their ilk as metaphors, but I suspect they are a little too slippery to be confined like that.

Maybe what has drawn my interest this time is an article I saw a while back on my BBC news phone app: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38267176 That I am being critical of matters to which I may, online at least, be naively party, has not escaped my notice. Irony, if not denotatives, can sometimes coexist, I suppose.

At any rate, it’s the issue of media advice I wish to address here. And the issue, I must confess, is problematic to say the least. In brief, a young London woman, Dami Olonisakin, began to write a sex and relationship blog, Simply Oloni, in 2008 because she felt that a lot of women didn’t have anyone to speak to. ‘It began as a personal lifestyle blog and she wanted to be the person that someone could speak to without being – or feeling – judged.’ Fair enough. She wanted ‘to give out impartial advice – something she believes can be more valuable than the opinion of a friend or a relative, who could be too emotionally involved.’ The identities of the participants and their problems were kept confidential and indeed she did not set herself up as an expert, merely an intermediary, as it were. She posted the problems on her Twitter account for her ‘26,000 followers to also share their advice and tips on the dilemma.”

It became quickly apparent, as she herself admits, that not every reader was happy with reporting the sorts of problems she receives. ‘”Not everyone has accepted that women are allowed to talk about sex freely, and we are allowed to embrace our sexuality; whether it’s choosing to keep your virginity until you’re married, or wanting to have casual sex, or wanting to be friends with benefits,” she says. “Your sex life is not a decision for other people to dictate.”’ And the critics were apparently not kind in their responses -they ‘trolled her’, to lapse into the vernacular for a moment: ‘”I’ve had trolls online telling me I’m ‘disgusting’ for suggesting that girls dating more than one man [at a time] is fine,” she says.’

A lot of things can be said under the cloak of online anonymity, to be sure and I suppose venting it serves some purpose or other… but as the inadvertent recipient of ‘trolling’ for writing a supportive comment on a news item a friend had posted online, I can attest to the concern –and even fright- that the vitriolic response elicited. It was almost as if someone had entered my house while I slept and spray-painted a hateful epithet on the bedroom wall. Perhaps I deserved it for daring to evince support for something in public -sorry, online; nobody agrees with everything, after all, but it was the emotions, the hatred, oozing from the words that felt threatening. And yet, maybe that’s just my age talking -presumably most youth today have evolved an internet shell under which they can shelter. But as the devastating effects of internet bullying have demonstrated, the shell is far from impervious. Far from universally distributed.

As bad as ‘trolling’ and internet bullying may be, however, I am more drawn to the courage of Oloni in recognizing the need that women –all of us, really- have a desperate wish to be heard. And to be heard impartially, non-judgmentally. Friends, clergy, and even doctors have the unfortunate habit of diagnosing and then advising; sometimes the person doesn’t want a diagnosis, let alone a treatment –she just wants someone to listen. Often the simple act of describing something to a dispassionate ear, is in itself a cure –or at least a relief. We don’t always require advice either –sometimes just a respectful silence. An acknowledgment.

This is often readily apparent in the privacy of my consulting room. I am a gynaecologist by trade, but occasionally ‘sounding board’ would describe it better. Deborah, a normal-appearing 38 year old Caucasian woman, was a good example.

She had been sent to me by a worried family doctor because of her heavy periods. Nothing the GP tried seemed to be working, so in desperation she had sent her reluctant patient to me to see what I could do for her. All of her tests were normal –iron stores, haemoglobin level, ultrasound of the uterine lining, and even a biopsy of those same cells (just in case) as she put in brackets.

On taking her history, Deborah assured me that her periods were quite regular and predictable, and on the whole, not any different from what she had experienced for years.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned them to Dr. Cameron,” she said once I had finished the history. “My mother and her sister both have heavy periods, so neither of them seemed at all worried when I was a teenager. But my GP seemed adamant: they were too heavy. In fact, she put me on all sorts of pills to decrease the flow…”

“And did they work?” I’m not sure why I interrupted her at that point, except for her eyes. They kept wandering to the pictures on the wall, or out the window to the tree outside. It was almost as it they feared to seek shelter on my face.

She shook her head at first, and then grinned. “Well, actually I didn’t take them -they were samples anyway, so…” She thought about it mid-sentence, and then suddenly revised it. “Well, actually I did take one and it made me feel sick, so that was it for the pills, I figured.” She shook her head sadly and then sent her eyes to explore the wooden carving of a woman holding a baby I’d positioned on my desk behind a plant to make it look as if she were hiding. “I felt like that woman,” she said, pointing at the carving. “You know, like I needed to hide from all her well-meaning advice.”

She was silent for a moment, so I waited. “I think Dr. Cameron had a thing about periods, actually. Each time I’d return for follow-up, she would smile and shake her head in that conspiratorial way women have –you know: ‘what a life we have to live’, and all that. She tried several contraceptives that I never took. And then she suggested a progesterone IUD that I refused.” Deborah finally allowed her eyes safe passage to my cheeks. “I only let her do the biopsy because she felt so upset about her treatment failures. She needed to find something. An explanation. Or better still, a solution.

“But I started to get really worried when she began to hint that I might need surgery. ‘Maybe just an ablation to get rid of the lining cells of the uterus,’ she added –probably because my face went pale.”

Deborah sat back in her chair and scrutinized my face, obviously more relaxed than when she’d entered the office. “Dr. Cameron suggested I see a gynaecologist that she was going to recommend, but I didn’t recognize the woman’s name. And anyway, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to discuss it with another woman…” A mischievous grin surfaced on her lips. “I figured I needed a non-participant… Neutral territory,” she added, her eyes twinkling. “And anyway, my mother sees you and she’s still got her uterus at seventy-three, so…” She blinked; it was my turn, apparently.

I shrugged and tried to suppress chuckling at her posture. She was comfortably ensconced –slouched, actually- in the far-from-comfortable wooden captain’s chair across from my desk, looking like she didn’t have a care in the world. I couldn’t remember anybody owning the chair –owning the office– like she did at that moment. “Well, Deborah, I have to say that I’m not worried about you.”

“No ablation? No hysterectomy…?” She pretended to pout. “Nothing?”

I smiled. “Well, if the periods get worse, you could always come back…”

The mischievous look returned. “Don’t worry, my mother would make me.”

 

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Time Out, eh?

Time-outs to wring behavioural change from naughty children are all the rage nowadays. Everywhere you go there seem to be men sitting near their tantrum-laden little boys in the parking lots of stores, or women standing outside of cars fastidiously ignoring the screams of alternately pounding and pouting children confined within. Perhaps this has been going on for years, but only recently have I begun to notice the ritual. In fact, it seems so ubiquitous, that I am beginning to suspect a flaw in my own upbringing. I don’t remember being an easy child; maybe I just had easy parents. Or maybe the Encyclopedia Britannica of the age didn’t cover that aspect of childrearing.

It might be investigating the obvious, but I had to look it up at any rate. Time-outs are more acceptable attempts at behaviour modification than corporal punishment –spanking comes to mind- especially in public, where the difference between remonstration and child abuse is uncomfortably opaque. The idea of social exclusion was likely popularized in a paper by a Dr. Montrose Wolf at the University of Washington in the mid 60ies, drawing on the work by his mentor, Dr. Arthur Staats (who called it ‘time-out’).

But, unless you grew up in Winnipeg in the 1950ies, you might now regard time-outs as such an intuitively obvious way of treating both the child’s misbehaviour and the resultant parental frustration, that you would be forgiven for assuming it had been hard-wired in our DNA. Perhaps it was, but with variable penetrance, and probable mid-prairie epigenetic modification –anyway, there seem to be some issues with its application: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/time-outs-study-parenting-1.3888166

By default, I suppose I’m an educationally impoverished repository of doctrinal wisdom when it comes to children. As an obstetrician, for years -until my own arrived, at least- my responsibilities ended with handing the freshly-liberated, and usually screaming newborn to the mother, tidying things up, and then congratulating the smiling, emotionally overcome parents before I left the room. I didn’t expect to be confronted with any of their subsequent behavioural peccadillos. But, as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra remarked, those were ‘my salad days, when I was green in judgment’.

Usually, I enjoy seeing children in the waiting room –they lend a kind of friendly family air to the office. Sometimes, however, there are things I need to discuss with the mother, procedures I need to perform, or even examinations that might alarm the child, so my enjoyment is often that of seeing the child stay in the waiting room. It’s not called that for nothing.

Clara was already a harried teenage mother of a two year old when I first met her several years ago, and I delivered three more for her in the following years. Now in her late twenties and recently divorced, she had been sent to see me for permanent birth control.

I heard the excited screaming even before I reached the front desk, and I have to admit that I hid behind a wall to assess the situation more fully before I ventured into the open. The first of the children I delivered -Edward, now around five- was stirring the pot by running around the room clutching a toy to his chest so the dauphin, despite the obvious entitlement of age, could not get it.

Clara’s long auburn hair, now partially liberated from whatever restraints she’d attempted at home, was hanging forlornly around her shoulders, while her eyes followed the action around the room like a hockey game. A large lady now, she sat uncomfortably on the edge of her seat, no doubt hoping to catch Edward and the toy if he was so unwise as to come anywhere near grabbing range. The youngest, still breast feeding, was the only one over whom she exercised even temporary dominion.

I glanced nervously around the room from the shelter of the alcove, hoping she had brought a friend or older family member with her, but Clara was the last patient of the day and the room was otherwise empty.

“Clara,” I said, face prepared, and hoping she hadn’t noticed me behind the wall. “Nice to see you again.”

The children immediately stopped running and flocked to my side to tug on my clothes. Jamie, the oldest, grabbed the toy from Edward, who was now too busy trying to reach my stethoscope to notice.

“I… I saw you… watching from the alcove, doctor,” Clara said, blushing a deep crimson because she almost said ‘hiding’. “I tried to get my sister to take care of the kids, but she had to work today…” She shrugged and reached out with lightning speed to grab Jamie’s arm before he could swat his brother. “You behave yourself, Jamie, or you’re gonna do a Time-out, eh?”

Jamie immediately akimboed his arms and made a face at his brother. “He grabbed my car…!”

Clara glared at him and frowned, but from the defiant face with which Jamie greeted the threat, I could see the battle lines hardening.

I glanced at my secretary sitting behind the front desk, but she was on the phone and I realized that I was on my own. “Let’s go into my office,” I said, with a worried look at the boys, and the little girl, Janice, who by now had decided that the way to recapture some attention was to stick her tongue out at Jamie. Only the baby seemed compliant, but that was probably because Clara was still nursing her.

My office, unfortunately, was not designed for children –there are simply too many things that could tip over or break if handled indelicately. On the way down the hall to the office, I even thought of getting my secretary to fake a call from the hospital requiring my immediate assistance, but she was still on the phone and merely winked at me as I passed. I got the impression she was just holding the receiver for show.

As soon as the troupe entered the office they began to explore, and Jamie, who had probably never seen pennies before, made a quick exploratory lunge for the penny bowl that sat in front of a terra cotta statue of a begging lady precariously balanced on a little oak table. Edward, on the other hand, was reaching for the carved wooden statue of a woman holding a child that I had put behind a plant on my desk, and Janice was trying to extract the contents of the shelf where I keep my medical journals. It was a multi-pronged attack worthy of an Alexander.

“I’m not sure this is going to work, doctor,” Clara said, trying unsuccessfully to reposition the baby onto a breast while glaring at all three of her children now crawling along the floor scooping pennies into their pockets.

I called my receptionist to come in with us. “Laura,” I said as she opened the door a crack and peeked in. “Please put the phone on hold, or something…  I need your help.” Actually, I needed a time-out.

I could feel Laura’s eyes rolling behind the door. She was the mother of three young children, so she knew what I was going to ask.

“I want you to take the kids and… occupy them for a few minutes while I talk to Clara.”

She shrugged, but I could tell from her face that she thought it might be an interesting challenge as she gathered the tribe -minus the now sleeping baby- and led it out of the door. The office felt so peaceful suddenly that Clara and I just looked at each other for a moment. I managed to gather a more complete history and when I opened the door to lead her across the hall to the examining room I could only hear quiet giggles.

Finally, after Clara and I had discussed her needs, we both tiptoed down the corridor to the waiting room. But it, too, was quiet except for Laura’s voice telling a story as the children sat around her in a little circle on the floor.

Each of them had a plastic speculum with a sticker face stuck on the top and when Laura asked a question, one of the children would make the speculum talk. They were loving it and didn’t even look up when we crossed the rug. But Laura did, her eyes glistening from quiet laughter.

Clara just stared at them, unable to speak.

Laura chuckled and then shrugged. “I gave each of them a choice of those little funny face stickers we always give to the kids and showed them how to attach them to the top of the speculum.” A contented sigh escaped as she watched them all talking quietly to each other through the specula. “From then on, it was just role playing…”

“How did you ever think of that, Laura?” I asked when they’d all left.

She shrugged again. “The specula have always reminded me of quidnuncs… you know, snoops -those who insist on sticking their noses in other people’s business.”

I had to sigh in admiration -Laura has a name for everything. I just hope she doesn’t expect me to name the specula now… But I looked up quidnunc just in case.

 

 

 

 

 

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Gender and Stress

Even the most ardent proponents of gender parity will admit that equality of opportunity does not imply equality of physiology. ‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal,’ as Aristotle said. Homogeneous –likeness, if you will- is not necessarily homogenous (a biological term meaning structurally similar due to common ancestry). Admittedly a semantically fraught distinction, it nonetheless suggests that there may well be differences that do not transcend gender.

For example, there seems to be a sexual discrepancy in the acquisition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)  http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37936514 -women tend to be more vulnerable to its development than men. A research team from Stanford University published a study in Depression and Anxiety (the official journal of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America) and it suggests that ‘[…] girls who develop PTSD may actually be suffering from a faster than normal ageing of one part of the insula – an area of the brain which processes feelings and pain. […]the insula, was found to be particularly small in girls who had suffered trauma. But in traumatized boys, the insula was larger than usual. This could explain why girls are more likely than boys to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the researchers said. The insula, or insular cortex, is a diverse and complex area, located deep within the brain which has many connections. As well as processing emotions, it plays an important role in detecting cues from other parts of the body. […]This shows that the insula is changed by exposure to acute or long-term stress and plays a key role in the development of PTSD.’ And as I quoted, the changes seem to be different in the two sexes.

The point of all this somewhat detailed background, is to submit that, as the study suggests, ‘it is possible that boys and girls could exhibit different trauma symptoms and that they might benefit from different approaches to treatment.’ Perhaps a sensitive counsellor would recognize this as the sessions continued, but it’s helpful to have some corroboratory evidence to justify any proposed changes.

I have to say that I was woefully ignorant of any sex difference in the development of PTSD. I’m embarrassed to admit that, if anything, I thought of it as largely a male condition –perhaps because of its association with war, and combat -traditionally at least, arenas of male predominance. But of course that is naïve. PTSD is not something confined to combat; it can be equally prevalent in other situations of distress or upheaval. Trauma is trauma, and long term issues can result from such things as natural disasters, car crashes, and certainly sexual or physical assaults, to name only a few. Because the symptoms can be confusing or even disguised, the diagnosis is best left to qualified practitioners, and yet I can’t help but wonder if a greater and more sensitive awareness of the possibility of the condition might encourage more sufferers to seek professional help.

As a gynaecologist, I feel uncomfortable and indeed far out of my depth in discussing most issues pertaining to PTSD, and yet thinking back over my years in practice, it seems to me that I may have suspected something of the sort, but lacked both the vocabulary and training to assign it a label –especially in those women I saw for conditions they suspected may have been attributable to previous sexual abuse: fears that they occasionally admitted to re-experiencing in unrelated events; things about which they still had nightmares; situations that led to unprovoked irritability and anger.

PTSD, by whatever name, has no doubt afflicted humans from time immemorial. Male hubris dictated that it be disguised or denied no doubt –it was a sign of weakness- and therefore unlikely to be mentioned in contemporary accounts. But signs of its presence occasionally snuck into mainstream literature -Shakespeare’s Henry IV being a likely candidate, for example. Perhaps more germane to my specialty, however, was the recognition of the lasting effects of trauma on people other than those involved in traditional conflict: women. The US Department of Veteran’s Affairs in its National Center for PTSD pamphlet states: ‘Most early information on trauma and PTSD came from studies of male Veterans, mostly Vietnam Veterans. Researchers began to study the effects of sexual assault and found that women’s reactions were similar to male combat Veterans. Women’s experiences of trauma can also cause PTSD.’ In fact they maintain that ‘The most common trauma for women is sexual assault or child sexual abuse.’ http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/women/women-trauma-and-ptsd.asp

For too long have the lasting effects of sexual assault been ignored, or at best, trivialized and examined through male eyes in a still-male world. I don’t mean to sound like an overzealous feminist who pins all problems on male dominance, but I think age and a career spent in women’s health grants me a unique –if still masculine- perspective. As with all things, specialists run the risk of deconstruction, overanalyzing the events often with the consequent subversion of their apparent significance -almost a form of historical revisionism, an unintentionally biased and often contextually barren interpretation. One bridge, when crossed by a thousand people, becomes a thousand bridges –we all see the world through our own experiences, our own expectations, our own prejudices.

I think the fact that we can now demonstrate that there are valid reasons to question those often unconscious assumptions is a cause for hope. Much as we have finally realized that the results of many studies carried out only using men cannot necessarily be mindlessly extrapolated to women, so it is becoming increasingly apparent that trauma and its effects may also be non-generalizable. Although not its prisoners, we are after all, creatures of a chromosomal lottery, divergent physiologies, and certainly of different past experiences, so why wouldn’t there be a spectrum of responses to stress?

So, is there a ‘man-cold’? Well, maybe… I know that’s the kind I get, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folk wisdom sometimes gets it right: there is a man-cold… Well, maybe.