This Government’s Public Health Priorities Are About as Whack as Getting Your Period Every Day For A Year in the Seventh Grade

by Ida Cuttler

It was my second week in Chicago, after moving here from San Francisco, and I was pacing back and forth on the cell-e-phone in a delightful Lakeview walkup, trying to find a doctor who would accept my California Blue Cross Blue Shield Away from home care insurance. I needed an annual in order to be prescribed more period pills. “Period pills” is, of course not the scientific name for this hormonal supplement that I take orally every day, for five days, once a month, three times a year, but it is a name that honestly describes what Medoxyprogesterone does, which is to induce menstruation.

The reason I have to use hormones to induce what occurs naturally in the body of most biologically assigned women is that I have what is called “Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome.” Another scientific name. This one is for: “Little-Bubbles-In-My- Ovaries-That-Make-My-Period-Never-Come-Because-They-Are-Making-Up-For-The-Time-They-Made-Me-Have-My-Period-Every-Day-For-An-Entire-Year-In-The-Seventh-Grade-Yes-Everyday-EVERYDAY.” Oh, and also sort of makes me have a mustache. Not too bad, Could be far worse.

Period pills are not birth control. I was on birth control for awhile but it made me feel and look like a combination of a painting of Picasso ladies during his blue period and that one painting of the giant dude ripping into a child to eat, (I think it’s Spanish). The pills I take are the pure form of progesterone, and the annual that accompanies the prescription was over due. I learned from my cell-e-phone research that the only place I could be seen with my insurance was The Planned Parenthood on Ashland in the Southside of Chicago, a neighborhood called Englewood, a neighborhood that in my two weeks of being in Chicago, I knew only two things about:

It was very far from where I was currently. It was not the warmest, fuzziest place on earth. (The warmest fuzziest place on earth is probably snuggling in the middle of a pile of beavers. I recently learned that they have one million hairs per square inch.)

Around 3 pm I took the red line from the north side of Chicago to Englewood and I watched the shift in the train car’s demographic take effect. The train was like a New York Jewish deli style black and white cookie and after the sox 35th station stop, one of the two frosted haves had been nearly completely polished off by an invisible man, birth-child of economic segregation and xenophobes. I grew up in a pretty integrated city, and taking the bus in San Francisco is more of a Chocolate-Chip-Oatmeal- Raisin-Peanut-Whatever-Else-Was-In-Your-Grandma’s-Cupboard-Cookie experience. Until that train ride, I had never been in a situation before where I was the only one of my own ethnicity. I was the white vanilla frosted fondant crumb, that stood out from the rest of the people on the train, and because I stood out in a way that I had never stood out before; I was nervous. I think standing out makes everyone a little nervous. Why do you think are there so many naked in classroom dreams? Train stops at the final stop south. 95th/Dan Ryan. I get off into newness. Naked, the classroom is a new city, that I’ve only been in for two weeks, a new neighborhood that’s almost as big as the reputation that supersedes it.

There were hardly any people around the streets that afternoon. The few people that were there, stood in clumps, and all turned to look straight at me when I passed by. Being stared at in such a way is a thing I have never liked. I had a teacher who, when students would answer questions in class, would just stare at us, not confirming if we had answered the question correctly or incorrectly. She’d just stare. It was uncomfortable. I hold onto the ends of the straps of my Jansport, like i’m holding onto the hope that it won’t be long before I reach period pills headquarters.

Here is some advice about looking lost in an unfamiliar place. It is not advisable to look lost. Here is some advice on taking out and using the Google maps on your phone in an unfamiliar and at times violent place. It is not advisable to take out your phone with Google maps. You and your lost face and your fancy phone will be the inevitable invitation and target for the man in the green Toyota Camry to follow you for a city block calling out “honey” and “sugar” and other glucose themed nicknames. He will offer to give you a ride to “anywhere, anywhere you wanna go.” Don’t look lost. Or at least try not to. Instead put on that mean and concentrated face, the one you perfected in college when you would see frat boys at a party begin to approach you to… I don’t know, play beer pong? talk to you?

It doesn’t matter where you are: If you are lost in a new place, be it 95th and archer or the Ekteerp, the 20th century town house lined neighborhood of Brussels, and you don’t want anyone to talk to you, do not walk at a theater major viewpoints movement class pace of a 1. Walk at an 8. Direct, and confident. Get to where you need to go. I put my phone away, after catching a glimpse of the map that told me the center was less than a block away. I quickened my pace, the man in the car quickened his. But then passed me. I reached the gated doors of Planned Parenthood, with a slightly quickened heart rate, and a need to nervous poop. It was my first time at a Planned Parenthood. The waiting room looked like most doctor’s waiting rooms. Ficus and all. My bowel movement needs were such that I went directly up to the receptionist to check in and immediately asked to use the bathroom.

The receptionist, who was a very pleasant older woman in teddy bear scrubs and braids, let me know where it was and handed me a small plastic cup and explained that the doctor might need a urine sample anyway, and I accepted, feeling that it may be rude and pointless to then explain to her it was number 2 and not number 1.

In the bathroom, I managed to squeeze enough droplets out and into the plastic cup. Peeing in a cup is something that, I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good at. I had a series of bladder infections at age five, and I have practiced my direct aim into the small plastic container. I also have excellent Kegel muscles to stop the flow, right in the cups half-way mark. Which is where you re supposed to stop it. I screwed the plastic top back on, and walked out of the bathroom back into the waiting room, full of people, pee in hand.

This was a mistake.

The receptionist was kind, she came up to me, and put her hand on my shoulder: “Oh honey,” she said. It was the second time I had been called honey today.

This honey was a lot more welcome than the last: “That right there, goes in the cabinet. In the Bathroom.”

I hadn’t seen this cabinet. I was too busy celebrating my excellent Kegels.

“Don’t worry,” she said with the kindness and patience of a Montessori school kindergarden teacher. “I’ll take it from here.”

I say the following phrase, which is a phrase that is not honest but which I have found I say all the time to normalize embarrassing behavior:

“Oh I’m sure, this happens all the time!”

After humiliating myself in this room full of people, I sat down on the carpet seat of an uncomfortable metal chair. I looked around at the other patients as I waited my turn. It was pretty crowded and everyone looked bored as fuck. All of the people in the waiting room were African American, fairly young, some had kids, some had kids on the way, others like me, were perhaps there for prescribed pills or annual vagina and booby check-ups. Mostly women but there were a few boyfriends or husbands on their phone or playing with the kids when the kids weren’t running around, I wondered if the families with kids, who looked about five, had come directly from school, or if they had to be picked up early by mom, because they didn’t have a babysitter, after school program and couldn’t walk home by themselves. We all waited for awhile. Despite the James Blunt song that grew more and more irritating, The Planned Parenthood near the 95th/Dan Ryan red line stop, was a comfortable and safe feeling place. It was still no pile of warm fuzzy beavers, but with the Highlights magazines full of terrible puns and fluorescent lights, and weird pattern carpet seat chairs: no doctor’s office ever is. I watched a girl laugh with the receptionist at checkout and the sun outside the center began to set.

Finally, my name was called. I was escorted into a doctor’s office and that is where I met Deanna. Deanna is the person you see before you see the Doctor. She asks you questions on your social history, drug and alcohol use. Or as she has self-labeled it: “The nosy questions.”

“Are you sexually active?” she asks

“Yes” I answer.

“I’m sorry, so nosy” is her response.

Next question: “Men, women or both? Sorry, so sorry, nosy, we gotta ask.”

“It’s okay. Both.”

“Oral, vaginal or Anal. I hate these, questions they are so nosy!”

The interview progressed with Deanna apologizing, and saying the word nosy, before each questions and between each answer. I tried to let her know through my calm and collected tone that her questions were okay, that in a female health appointment I was expecting to be asked all of this and more, but Deanna remained squeamish. She seemed to be more uncomfortable asking the questions than I was in answering them.

“Do you do any street drugs?” she asks

I do not know what that means so I say “No.”

“Do you smoke?” she asks

“Just weed,” I say.

“HEY! That’s a street drug!”

“Oh, yes, sorry. Sometimes I do street drugs.”

We laugh together.

“Hey, me too..” she says.

I learn from Deanna that there is only one doctor at this Planned Parenthood to see all of these patients. I also learn that her awesome long false neon pink fingernails are a recent edition and last week they used to be orange. Deanna is the opposite of a boy at a frat party: she is someone who I want to talk to. We talk for a while, she calls me honey, now the third time I’ve been called this within a span of an hour.

At one point I ask her where she’s from. She says she lives a few blocks away. She asks me where I am from. I tell her California and she, without hesitation, responds:

“What? California? What are you doing in Chiraq!”

Chiraq is the portmanteau of “Chicago” and “Iraq” to equate the Southside area of Chicago as a war zone. I was surprised to hear Deanna call it Chiraq. I knew that people living outside of the Southside called it Chiraq but I did not know that the people whose neighborhood, who live a few blocks away, called it that. Deanna asks me about living in California, and told me she would love to visit Disneyland. Deanna says she likes Chicago but:

“I hate all of the winters.” and “I am sick of everyone always getting shot.”

The first half of her response is something I have heard other Chicagoans, say and the second half is something that I think only gets said by the people who live in in this side of the deli cookie.

Dr. Starr uses the plastic shoehorn looking speculum to splay my vagina out in such a way that it matches the flower photography on the doctor office walls. Dr. Starr is good at the talk and touch element of doctor-ness, letting me know the times that I will feel pressure, and swabbing. She is as nice as everyone i’ve met at the Planned Parenthood that day. Unlike the other receptionists and unlike Deanna, she does not have long false fingernails. For obvious reasons. At one moment during the exam, I looked out the window that was next to the coochie flower to see that the pinkish evening Chicago sky had now turned dark and starry and I stop being able to hear the rich midewestern blonde tones of the doctor because I start to feel a little nervous about the upcoming walk back to the train station and about having to do this walk alone. I thought about asking Dr. Starr if there was someone, like a security guard, to walk with me. Most of all I thought a lot about how to ask this. While I have no problem discussing my sexual history with a near stranger, I do not know how to discuss feeling afraid of an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous neighborhood. I needed it to sound like I was causally curious rather than frantically desperate for a companion to protect my vulnerable period pill clutching self.

I was oh so calm, oh so collected:

“HEEEEEEYYY YEEEEEEH So, um is there someone to um maybe walk me home, I mean to the train station, just like I’m new here and I don’t wanna get lost and like if not no worries but if there is, that would be cool to. You know I know it’s only two blocks…”

If only there was such thing as mouth Kegels to stop my rambley flow of thoughts and requests. But Dr. Starr is a professional and she managed to hear through the um’s and you knows.

“You didn’t drive?”

“No.” I said.

Dr. Starr announced “Pressure” and then she removed the speculum from my body.

“I don’t think you should take the train. It’s late. I’ll call you a cab.”

Dr. Starr left the room before I could protest. In the hall, I heard her tell Deanna to tell the receptionist to tell a cab to come pick me up. I felt terrible that they were going to get me a cab. I felt stupid and like it was bratty and unnecessary to be so concerned about a little night walking. At least until Deanna pokes her head in and says:

“You need to drive. Everyone here drives to work.”

And this makes me feel less like big old wall painting flower pussy for having a taxi called on my behalf. I re-entered the lobby, and even though it was empty, as I was clearly the only one still left in the building, the receptionist still said: “Were YOU the one who wanted the cab?” The receptionist who asked this was different than the first receptionist. The one who pointed out the bathroom and then didn’t laugh at me when I didn’t know from cabinets.

This receptionist was a little younger, and thinner and she also looked a little meaner, but maybe that was just the effect of her scrubs, which were plain as opposed to teddy bear patterned

“‘You’re gonna be waiting a long time, Honey.”

Honey #4.

“Cause cabs don’t come out here. Not at this time of night. Not in this neighborhood.”

I find that I don’t know what to do. The statement confirms the worries that were stewing on that cold medical table, in my backless dress. I go from somewhat worried to mostly worried. I don’t know what to do and then she says:

“We’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

I know that it can’t be part of their job description to walk little jew-ey string bean shaped girl with away-from-home-care and little bubble-shits on her ovaries to the redline. But she and teddy bear scrubs are both already putting on their coats.

“If anything happens to us on the way back though, we’re blaming you.”

These two Planned Parenthood employees, as well as everyone I met that day, took the time to provide a women’s health service that i don’t often hear in the discussion when we talk about this organization. They are calling us honey in the right way, they are taking the urine from our socially awkward hands, putting politeness at the forefront in their line medical history questioning, Dr. Starr can perform a pap smear but even more importantly deciphering and validating the mumblings of someone scared to speak up.

“Do you smoke?” receptionist one asks me on our walk to the bus stop and because she has a cigarette out while she is asking it, I don’t clarify if she means street or not.

“I don’t.” I tell her.

“You should smoke,” she says. “When you smoke people don’t wanna mess with you.”

The employees at Planned Parenthood are making someone feel safe walking home in a place, in a neighborhood, a cookie half, where they don’t feel safe themselves, where they are tired of the shootings, where the cabs don’t come, and they have to drive after dark, or else find out the necessary mechanisms to not be messed with. Thanks to these two women, I got to the train stop, un-messed with.

Doctors suggest that I take a hormone three times a year or else risk a build up some cancerous cells in my uterus lining. I suggest we start demanding from our politicians an ensured safety of women in every community, everywhere or else risk a build up of more misguided falsified bullshit.

I suggest more things:

I suggest that we start asking some “nosy” questions from our government.

1. Why certain lives are valued over others?

2. Why is control over women’s bodies prioritized and control over guns overlooked?

3. Why are we taking money away from an organization that gives safety and comfort and necessary medical assistance and not giving money to after school programs in under funded areas so that the mom in the waiting room didn’t necessarily have to bring her kid to a boring fluorescent lit, James-Blunt-playing, doctor’s office? I suggest that it might be time to see our government for what they really are: the same as the man in the Toyota Camry. They are messing with us and objectifying us, keeping us from getting to where we need to go. Where, by 2015, we should already be.