Bad Prescription

The more I'm at home during the morning hours, the more I find myself being assaulted by daytime television doctors offering me "the best information" on various medical maladies. Like yesterday, for example, I turned on Doctor Oz to try to take a nap and they were devoting a whole day to "diseases that specifically target women." Well, as I'd say about 80% of their audience is women who want to get into Doctor Oz's scrubs, this was a good idea( to bored husband: "Why don't you care about my health as much as Mehmet?" ).

First up on the list of horrible things I will surely die of was heart disease. Don't get me wrong, I don't find heart disease comical at all and it is the number one killer of women these days, but seriously--does anyone not think there is going to be serious ramifications from eating KFC three times a day (extra krispy my arteries, Colonel!) What advice did the good doctor give out? Exercise and eat right, and as if this was some amazing new revelation, a member of the audience pulled out a piece of paper a wrote it down.

This seemed to be the bulk of the advice from everything to cancer prevention and stretch marks (how are stretch marks a disease again?). What really took the cake though was the advice given out on uterine fibroids. There were several women who suffered from fibroids as guests who spoke about their various struggles with them, specifically how having a hysterectomy has affected their lives. On this note, Doctor Oz started on about how gynecologists try to push hysterectomies on their unsuspecting victims...oops, I meant patients...before they go off and tie young girls to rail road tracks and twirl their diabolical looking mustaches. Basically, he told millions of women that hysterectomies were barbaric and now completely medically useless for this disease. While I agree that a hysterectomy shouldn't ever be the first thing done to treat fibroids, I don't think anybody shouldn't consider them an option if they are in serious pain.

For example, one women was 45 years old and she had a hysterectomy when she was 43; she couldn't leave the house because within 15 minutes of standing, she'd be drenched in blood. She spent all of her days in bed. And all she cared about was that she knew she was never going to be able to have a child again. Sorry, to break it to you lady, but if the surgeon didn't render you barren nature was going to. She already had three grown children, did she really want to go through the trials of having a new born in her 40's? At this point, Doctor Oz commented on how "the uterus was germane to a woman's identity as a woman." I think a man knows about as much about what is "germane" to my identity as I do about what is to his. I am not defined as female because I can spit out a child. I see myself as female because of a number of experiences and my organs, not one or the other. If I got breast cancer I had to have a full mastectomy, I wouldn't view myself as a hideous monster between genders.

If you're in pain, if you're in danger of dying, use your brain--remove yourself from that situation. Sentiment aside, you won't be a woman if you're dead. You'll be decaying in the ground because you couldn't part with an organ that wasn't necessary for your life. Of course, it would be a depressing thought to me if I heard that I was going to o through menopause in my 20's and never have a child organically, but I would still be alive. I could make some child's life infinitely better by adopting it and giving it a home.

That being said, Doctor Oz does do some good. He alerts the general populace of housewives about nutrition (what? I can't eat 3 grams of fiber everyday and be okay? Whole grain pasta it is!) and encourages dialogue about medical conditions, even the hideously embarrassing ones (ie: "why does my belly button ooze this bad smelling yellow goo?" Real question an audience member asked. No joke).But, really--be smart, ladies. Make the right decision for you based on your situation and not what some man on television tells you.