Happy birthday to you

... my dear contraceptive pill. Without you I would have had to live with years of pain once a month. Without you, I would have not have been able to get out of bed with the anemia. Without you, I might have gotten pregnant when I was raped. During consensual sex you were my back up plan, should the condom break or leak.

You are still only available on prescription because the balding middle age white men who take the decisions are not willing to relinquish control of women's bodies. The logic is, if girls are afraid of getting pregnant, they won't have sex. As if pregnancy was just another "I told you so". As if having consensual sex was a bad thing.

There is a direct correlation between lack of comprehensive sex education and teenage pregnancy. If schools taught that girls are supposed to feel pleasure too, it would be another tool in the box of "stand up for what you want". Girls should not be put in the position of gatekeepers to the precious vagina always saying no. Mutual respect and informed consent is a more pragmatic approach.

But the medical profession prefers to be thought of as gods dispensing wisdom from on high, reserving the right to scold women as being foolish little girls, especially in the case of the morning after pill. Firstly, you got to pay €50 to see the doctor. Then put up with the lecture. Eventually you get the prescription and then pay the extortionate pharmacy fees. In plenty of other European countries, anyone can walk into a pharmacy and buy the morning after pill over the counter.

Then again Ireland has never taken a pragmatic approach to any issue. Ireland legislates for the population it wants, not the population it has. That's why the measures taken never work.

Hump day humour

Ganked from Fatmammycat cos it's hilarious

Best. Flowchart. Ever.

By the wonderful Ms Lola Snow

Menstrual pain

I was snoozing on my return flight, half watching the screen, shifting around in my seat to find a comfortable place when pain that I have difficulty describing struck. I felt that my uterus was seizing. Not even in my adolescence had i felt pain like this - muscles spasaming, stomach churning, flushed and sweating. I had no idea what was going on.

I expected my period in a few days and the pain felt like menstrual pain but magnified to the nth degree. I couldn't do anything but moan and tremble. After what seemed like twenty minutes, I managed to haul myself out of the seat and find an steward. No one had responded to the call button.

Finally I understood what was going on. The steward explained that the air pressure had an effect on premenstrual tension. She told me that it was well known in her profession and that the women scheduled their shifts around their periods. Of course it makes sense...

I consider myself fairly up to date in health and menstrual cycles but I had never heard of this before. It's something I'll consider the next time I fly. Did I miss the class that dealt with pressure? Did I blank out the memory because taking our periods into consideration of travel plans is yet another way to set women apart? To my knowledge, no medical professional, no friend, no website has let me know that air travel can cause extreme pain.

I'll remember that pain and pain accordingly in future.

The perfect doctor

With the experience of the past 30 years on earth, I thought nothing about medical professionals could surprise me. I've been told to get bariatric surgery because it's a magical cure for PCOS. I've been told to lose weight or die. I've been told that not hating my body means I have a personality disorder. I've been told to look it up on the web seconds after a diagnosis. I've argued with doctors and corrected doctors (many don't appreciate that)

After all that I'm fairly cynical about doctors. The majority see a fat woman and think that I eat too much and don't exercise because I weigh around 120 kgs. Even the more respectful doctors suggest losing weight for health reasons. There are reasons why I weigh 120 kgs but I refuse to categorise myself into a "good fattie" or a "bad fattie". However, I do find it particularly evil and ignorant of doctors to suggest losing weight when I have a certified medical disease that prevents weight loss.

Dengue fever struck me two weeks ago - a final gift from the developing world. I have since been seeing a very hot, witty and intelligent doctor who was already ticking all my boxes. Very competent and thoughtful.

Today he took the cake, as it were. My ankles are swollen for some unknown reason probably unrelated to the dengue. They've been swollen for the past six months. He's given me diuretics and requested to weigh me. This was the first mention of my weight. I refused. He explained his reasoning.

He reckons I'm carrying about 5 kilos of water weight. He wanted to weigh me to track that 5 kilos until I got back to the right weight for me.

Yes he said the right weight for me. I almost started crying. He implied that I'm fine the way I am. I know that but first time ever that a medical professional treated me as a person rather than a big fattie.

I almost launched myself across the desk to shove my tongue in his mouth but I restrained myself.

How am I gushing so much about human kindness? Why is his behaviour exceptional when it should be standard? I am used to walking into a clinic with gritted teeth prepared to fight for my right to be treated as a human being and not an insect. It's a relief to know that I don't have to always play defence.

Happy thoughts to Dr N, the perfect doctor

Is half the population crazy or is is just the shrinks?

From the great Junkfood Science comes the latest "kids nowadays" - shrinks claim that one is every two college kids has a psychiatric disorder. The mind boggles.

Wild and crazy toga parties, food fights, drinking, smoking, and foolish pranks made National Lampoon’s Animal House a cult classic thirty years ago. Today, college kids like Bluto, played by John Belushi, and his friends would be diagnosed as needing psychiatric treatment.

Nearly half of all college-age young people had a psychiatric disorder in the past year, according to psychiatrists from New York in the latest issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. More precisely, their behaviors, as reported to interviewers during a 2001-2002 epidemiological survey, matched symptoms listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).

Right. And there was I thinking that "outlandish" behaviour was a result of freedom after restriction since childhood. But then again, I'm thinking logically not emotionally.

I had a few wild years in college, as did most of my classmates, and guess what? Now most are perfectly normal adults leading good enough lives. The very idea that we somehow have a psychiatric disorder is ludicrous. Seems to me like the shrinks want to scare us into therapy, where they make a mint.

I've no doubt that a particularly bad shrink may label me paranoid for writing this but it seems to me that there is more of a emphasis put on diagnosing the masses than treating with compassion and respect. I've seen two shrinks and both sucked: shrink A because she treated critical incident stress as an ongoing clinical issue; and shrink B because she pathologised my personality based on my fat.

That's a ridiculous assessment. Either shrinks are crazy or I am. As someone who has a mental illness, I am within the system. I don't think that accepting what I cannot change is a symptom on a personality disorder.

When I read shit like this it pisses me off because I know so many people that are utterly failed by healthcare systems, public or private. It also starts me wondering that if half the population has a psychiatric disorder then (a) can we really call it a disorder and (b) why is it so stigmatised?

When I go to see a doc, a mental one or otherwise, I evaluate care based on these criteria:

• Respect for patients
  
• Diagnosis
• Ability to work with me
• Listening to me
• Hearing me
  
• Disagree when you need to but try not to hit me over the head with it
• Talk to me as I am, not as a child or an idiot
• Do not ever express that you know more about my body then I do. So tired of explaining to each doc that my temperature is normal at 36 not 37...
  
• Don't be afraid to admit ignorance
  

A medical professional is in the business of providing and not creating services. If a doc provides a crappy job then ze doesn't get paid. As for the doc who told me to "look it up on the internet", I'm never paying that bill.