For reasons that will become clear, I do not like going to the doctor. But I need to take a couple of prescription drugs to be able to live a tolerable life, so at least once each year I have to go. And here I am in the Clinical Center again, wondering just what hoop I'll have to jump through this time.
"Hello. Why are you here today?"
"I need to have my prescriptions renewed for another year and the doctor always wants to see me for that."
"Hmm, are you due for a Pap?"
"No."
"Okay, let's see. With the estrogen you're taking, are you having any periods at all?"
"No."
"Well, the doctor will be in to see you as soon as he arrives."
"Thanks."
Anyone who looks far enough in my chart would realize that those are silly questions, but there is enough paper in there now that my 'history' is deeply buried. Like most places, the Clinical Center identifies people as simply M or F, so it's left up to me to decide whether to inform the nurse that I'm transsexual. Today, I just don't feel like it.
The doctor knows more about me, though he wasn't around back when I transitioned. (The doctor who was here has left the field of medicine; I miss her. The next doctor moved to the other side of the state not long after the first and only time she saw me. Now that I think on it, she insisted on asking me the same silly questions the nurse did today, though she knew better. I suspect she was trying to make a point about my not being a womyn born womyn. I guess I'm not sorry she moved away.)
My current doctor is young and not too long out of a medical school where there is a gender clinic, so perhaps he knows more, or has contacts, or at least believes I'm not a freak. He tries to keep a little humor in our interaction.
"Coming up on a major age mile post next year, aren't you?"
"Yep."
"We'll need to talk about some tests at that point. Do you still have a prostate in there somewhere?"
So maybe he doesn't know all that much. "I suppose so."
"The estrogen probably reduces your risk a lot there. Hmm, a mammogram might be a good idea next year."
"I've been taking estrogen for a while."
"I don't know, seems like a good idea." He shrugs. "I don't think anyone really does know these things."
He gets points for honesty, but his humor doesn't keep me from feeling like an experimental animal. But I collect my new prescriptions, collect my children from the waiting room, and head back out into the heat of summer.
A problem or condition is iatrogenic if it is caused by a medical treatment, procedure, or diagnosis. I think the term was coined for conditions such as bed sores and opportunistic infections; it has quite a different ring to many intersexual and transsexual people.
Our culture seeks to establish each person as male or female from the moment of birth, prescribing their behavior as masculine or feminine, their social role as man or woman, and their sexuality as hetero. If a body is ambiguous, or if a person deviates from their prescription, a medical emergency is declared until sex and gender and sexuality can be properly realigned. Those who are not good candidates for realignment, who cannot afford realignment, or who do not wish realignment, are stamped REJECT.
I've got bad news for all you normals. Long term it is you who are the exception; we're the rule. Forever is a long, long time.
That's what I think, here in East Lansing in July 2001