The Very Unsexy Reason I Haven’t Seen a Doctor in a Decade
Or, why the penultimate "Fleishman is in Trouble" episode hit a little too close to home.
The thing about inner work is that once you start doing it, you begin to question everything. It’s the kind of work that encourages you to ask yourself why you are the way you are. The questions become all-encompassing. Sometimes the answers sneak up and surprise you.
In a conversation with my husband in 2020, I realized that I hadn’t been to a doctor in the better part of a decade. One reason was that my connection with health insurance had always been a bit spotty (such is the plight of a freelance writer), and I had long-ago adopted an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality around my physical health. When I questioned my motivations further, however, I ultimately came face to face with the truth. My top-of-mind rationalizations barely scratched the surface. The reality centered on an experience I’d repressed so deeply I nearly forgot it ever happened.
Trigger warning
In 2013, I was living in the Clifton neighborhood of the Gaslight District of Cincinnati, Ohio. I worked for a company called F+W Media, where I was an associate editor for two graphic design magazines, Print and HOW. I had a one-bedroom apartment in a building that eventually became infested with bedbugs, and I was on the cusp of achieving my lifelong dream of getting a puppy. Or, I had already had him a few months.
The timeline is fuzzy because I have come to realize that, in the intervening years, I had subconsciously blocked out two traumatic events: The time a friend of a friend raped me in my own bed and the physical where a doctor assaulted me by performing an unnecessary act without my consent. This essay is about the latter. The former is a tale for another time.
For many years, I didn’t have the words for what happened in that Queen City doctor’s office. I do now. Several, in fact. Medical rape, medical assault, medically violated. I came to understand these terms more fully when I began Kim Anami’s course, Vaginal Kung Fu. One of the things she often says is that some of the most disgusting things that happen to a woman’s body occur inside a doctor’s office. She’s speaking mostly about gynecologists/OBGYNs and traumatic birth experiences, but I’ve found that these types of violations can happen anywhere. And they don’t need to defile your vagina to be demeaning, disturbing or distressing.
In my experience, the event happened during the course of a routine check-up. I had insurance, and my mom was pressuring me to get a physical. She knew it had been a while. I agreed to go. After all, the visit was covered and it wouldn’t hurt to confirm that everything was fine. Except it wasn’t fine. I remember not liking the doctor to begin with. He was a little too informal, a bit too buddy-buddy. He performed what seemed to be a normal examination. At some point, he must have asked me to lay down and turn over.
Then, without warning, asking for consent or using lube (as far as I could tell), he stuck his fingers into my anus. I was shocked. I didn’t know that was going to happen, and I’d never had a physical that included this type of exam. I immediately felt violated. It all just felt so wrong, but what could I say? I’m not a medical professional. This was not my area of expertise.
The doctor gave me a reason for why he did this. I don’t remember what it was, as that detail has been lost to time. I do recall that when I told my friends in the University of Cincinnati medical program what had happened, they were equally unsettled. There was no reason to do what he did. The medical community had long ago decided that the reason for performing this procedure on a young woman was outdated and unnecessary. I also recalled that after this violation, Dr. Dipshit noticed that my left eye is a different size than my right. He told me off-handedly that this could be attributed to something wrong with my brain and left it at that. It wasn’t enough to assault me. He felt the need to insult me as well.
I remember crying in my car after I left the office, but following my discussion with my friends, I felt harmed all over again. I felt hurt and angry and, worst of all, helpless. There was no recourse—not really, anyway. Buddy-buddy doctor could always claim that he did tell me what was going to happen and that it was an old-school but effective way of ensuring everything was ship-shape with my physical health. I wouldn’t have the knowledge or expertise to rebuff him. The word of a male doctor would easily trump the word of a female patient who couldn’t fully articulate what made her feel so uneasy, so resolute that something was wrong. A woman’s intuition is unlikely to hold up in court.
So, instead of fighting back, I simply stayed away. Until I became pregnant with my daughter in July of 2022, I never went to another doctor—dentists and optometrists excepted. Even then, I knew I wouldn’t go to a traditional OBGYN. My prenatal care has been with a team of midwives. The only discomfort I’ve had with this experience involved explaining why I didn’t have any primary medical providers or the reason my last pap smear was so long ago I can’t remember when or where it happened. They were surprisingly chill about it. I think many women get it. We’ve had our fair share of unpleasantness in the name of standard practice, “common sense” and business as usual.
That brings me to the penultimate episode of Fleishman is in Trouble, a Hulu series detailing the disintegration of a marriage. If you haven’t been watching the show, I highly recommend it. R and I looked forward to it every Thursday. The season finale (episode eight) aired two weeks ago (12/29/22), but now is the time to binge if you’re interested. Otherwise, proceed with caution. Spoilers for episode seven follow.
Rachel Fleishman is a boss, we learn, in more ways than one. Having lost her mother at a young age, Rachel mostly found her own way through the world. She hit all the traditional markers of success: graduating law school, landing a prestigious job as a talent agent, building and running her own lucrative business, getting married, birthing two children, moving into a fancy apartment, climbing her way up the social latter to secure a gaggle of affluent and influential (if infinitely irritating) friends.
Rachel Fleishman has made it. We know it to be true because we see it all happen through the eyes of her put-upon husband, Toby. What we don’t see until episode seven, snarkily titled “Me Time,” are the sacrifices, the hurt, the violation that changed everything. This is the moment when the show shifts to Rachel’s perspective. We get to see the world through her very tired eyes.
Suddenly, the things we thought we understood as truth become far more complex. We begin to know things that Toby’s limited viewpoint could never show us, even if he were willing to admit some level of fault for what went wrong. For Rachel, the moment that causes irreparable damage occurs when Toby steps outside the hospital room, leaving her in the care of an unfamiliar on-duty OBGYN.
Without warning or consent, said doctor forcibly breaks Rachel’s water (as she screams in agony), rushing her into labor and resulting in a cesarean birth of her daughter. We see Rachel’s helplessness as she lays motionless and spread eagle while her first child is removed from her womb. The violation is world-altering. It is the moment this powerhouse woman is made to feel completely powerless. Where is she supposed to go from here?
The consequences are what viewers might predictably expect: Rachel is not only disconnected from her daughter and her own body. She is also disconnected from herself. She struggles to cope. The experience makes her feel entirely alone, especially in comparison to the moms from her prenatal yoga birth whose superior and uncomplicated births create an invisible wall that keep Rachel and her less-than-magical experience at a comfortable distance. Rachel’s “me time” is bitterly sarcastic. It’s the hour between when her daughter goes down to nap and Toby returns home—that’s her time to collapse onto the floor and cry uncontrollably into the carpet.
When Toby begins to worry that his wife’s postpartum depression is more serious than the usual “baby blues,” he encourages her to see someone. Rachel is adamantly opposed to therapists, but after she spots a poster for a group for sexual assault survivors in the hospital waiting room, she seeks out those she perceives to be her people. Rachel’s share at the initial meeting is comprised of wordless sobbing until the group coalesces around her with silent comfort. One fellow survivor says what Rachel has likely been waiting to hear for months: “We understand.”
I can’t fully describe what it felt like to watch this episode. When Rachel was violated, my stomach lurched. I cried with her and for her and for me. While I’ve had my fair share of painful and dismissive experiences with a male OBGYN—ones that prompted me to stop going for pap smears and preventative reproductive care long before I stopped seeing doctors altogether—I haven’t had my birth co-opted by a medical professional who swore to do no harm.
And yet, the wound felt familiar. The episode hit close to home. I’m sure it did for many people with uteruses, especially people of color who experience a notoriously horrific level of care at a much higher rate than their white counterparts. The allopathic medical community often asks us to trust the professionals with our bodies. I think there is room to be skeptical that everyone has our best interests at heart.
Inner work may have led me to the place where I understand my experience and how it impacted me, but the knowledge hasn’t yet empowered me to face my fear of modern medicine. I don’t think I need to. Instead, the work has taught me to be discerning about the care I choose for myself and, eventually, for my daughter. A woman’s intuition may not hold up in court, but it protects me in many ways. I trust this inner voice to speak up before I’m ever in a position to feel disempowered again.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix