Bonus Round Patient Pages
Encouraging better caregiver/patient communicationMARIE CAIN'S BONUS ROUND PAGES
Valentine's Day, 2000.
The anniversary of the
worst mistake of my life.
Hey Nineteen!You're goin' to the chapel and you're gonna get married?
Why do fools fall in love?
Any marriage where either partner has the suffix "teen" in their age should just be automatically written off and erased from all the record books.
But that's another story.
Let's look at the one intelligent thing I did concerning this otherwise well-intended but undeniably stupid decision which still haunts me and whenever I hear people say about their lives "I wouldn't change a thing" I am so envious I almost cannot stand it because getting married at nineteen is certainly the first -- but not the last -- decision I would go back and change regardless of how it altered the rest of my existence.
Okay, deep breath and just relax now.
Birth Control.
At least I knew enough to take every precaution against getting pregnant. Mostly because I had every intention of being The World's Biggest Star, and even at nineteen I had exactly zero romantic ideas about dragging a baby around to the road dumps and dives my rock band was playing in (but only until I was Discovered, which would certainly be no later than a week from Tuesday).
So, off to the gynecologist I went for my first encounter with The Stirrups.
It's not like any Western movie you've ever seen, okay? It's not even Debra Winger seductively slip-sliding, hip-gliding, strip-riding the mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy.
However, if the Western movies you've been watching starred Linda Lovelace or Marilyn Chambers, and had titles like Freezing Saddles or A Fistful of Latex perhaps you have some idea of what this delightful experience is like, except that:
- It's not fun.
- It's not erotic.
- It's not remotely sexy in any way.
- And hopefully, nobody is filming it.
It's a man you've never met wielding cold steel, a rubber glove and a serious case of professional ennui unrelieved by humor. The thrill of viewing genitals closeup has been over for him since his internship -- now his life is just one unrelenting vaginal deja vu.For God's sake, can't somebody put some flocked paper on these walls or at least hang a couple of tiny paintings on them? I am bored out of my mind with shades of pink!
Okay, so far it sounds like fun, you say. Or even a bit like your last relationship.
Perhaps when I feel that you know me better, I'll relate an anecdote about how I actually made it fun once. Or at least provided one doctor with a story he has undoubtedly told repeatedly, both in his office and at cocktail parties.
But for now, let's concentrate on those birth control pills.
Fortunately, I actually was getting married, so the scornful look the doctor gave me didn't bother me nearly as much as it would have if I'd been about to go into the sinful life which his withering expression and disdainful manner told me he really suspected I was.
He prescribed the pills and gave me no information whatsoever regarding potential side effects. Amazingly, there was no such literature included with the pills, either.
Almost immediately, I gained twelve belly-bloating pounds (which on my then Twiggy-like frame was very noticeable, and my first bewildered thought was that I was pregnant).
Savage migraine headaches started making surprise visits, like the tiny creatures in the Karen Black movie Trilogy Of Terror -- fierce little beings with sharpened teeth and miniature machetes, biting and stabbing my eyeballs from inside my skull. Satan himself tightened a vise fashioned in the fires of Hell around my temples while his Lilliputian henchmen partied on in the Cranial Cabaret.
Often it felt like something was stopping my heartbeat -- blocking the flow of arterial blood momentarily and causing me to almost pass out in the middle of a song. I would actually have to grip the piano keys tightly to keep from toppling over.
I became irritable and unromantic "Don't touch me there! Or anywhere, for that matter!" became my mantra.
My legs were so painful, I had to sit on a stool onstage. Okay, this was the one thing I thought maybe, just maybe could be explained by my 5-inch stilettos. But the timing seemed too coincidental.
I went back to the doctor and reported all my symptoms.
He gave me yet another pedantically disgusted look and said with contempt, "I've had hundreds of women tell me the same thing. Believe me, it's all in your head."
Huh? Had my Dad's hypochondriac gene finally kicked in? Astonished at his scientific approach (who needs that ridiculous double-blind study business when The Doctor's expertly misogynous opinion is so much more convenient and undoubtedly accurate?) and never having learned to respect Authority, I sardonically asked "You've had HUNDREDS of women tell you of these EXACT SAME symptoms, and you're saying it's all in our heads? So we're having some sort of mass Eve's-punishment hysteria?"
"Precisely." He was more than a little impressed that I had grasped the concept so readily.
Naturally, all of the above symptoms eventually came to be recognized as very real and are still included in the brochures which now come with birth control pills. Or perhaps the doctors are merely placating us and our ongoing decades-long, gender-group hallucination.
It was not until years later that I was able to even find a female ob/gyn (we've come a long way, baby). It was a revelation, like finally having a mechanic who has actually driven a car.
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You can write Marie at marie@bonusround.com