Frantic

You know, I get the ideas for my blog posts the way everybody gets ideas. Sometimes it's about my past or present or my hopes for the future. Sometimes I have an experience that just gets me thinking. I might be thinking about ice cream, or it may be something incredibly serious. One never knows what simple things will lead us onto the deep-thoughts train, but it often takes us on an unpredictable ride. A few days ago, I had a simple thing take me right to that train station.

I was catching up on my life, the world, and the New York Times crossword puzzle when my phone gave me a notification. If I placed a free delivery order from a convenience store through a certain we-deliver-food-and-stuff-to-you app, they would give me a discount of ten dollars. I gladly took up the challenge to find more than twelve dollars worth of snacks and beverages, quickly going over the minimum purchase amount. Have you noticed how much easier it is to spend extra money on items from convenience stores when you know you'll be getting a chunk of it back? Ah, the fun games our minds and pockets play.

I was notified fairly quickly that my order was completed by the store and on its way to my home. Woo-hoo! Kettle style chips and diet soda for the win! I fiddled around some more on the phone, waiting for the notification to get my things from outside the front door. A phone call came in from a number I didn't recognize, so I followed my usual pattern of not answering it. Before I knew it, there was a message from the delivery driver. Call, it said. Of course I knew that the driver was a little bit lost. 

This poor nervous fellow was beside himself. Frankly, it was hard to get a word in edgewise, as Gram used to say. Even then, I'm fairly certain he didn't pay close attention to my directions, because he called again saying that he was lost and couldn't find my building. I tried to tell him it was across from where he was parked, but he was going into a meltdown. I told him I would come outside, put on my fabulous tie-dye Crocs, and headed out to the parking lot. I phoned him again and saw his car head toward the turn into my parking lot. Turn left, I said. He did, but at the next building. He decided to go back to his starting point at the mailbox, and even though he had mentioned certain landmarks on the first trip into the maze, he still was sure he couldn't find me.

"I don't know what to do, I can't see you!" was the poor driver's cry. I told him that I could see him coming. Again, he couldn't see me, I wasn't in the parking lot. I said he couldn't miss me, I was quite big. So here I was in my pjs and Crocs, phone in hand, and waving my arms over my head. He was a wreck, and I told him patiently that everything was fine, and started walking back home with my bag of snacks, As I walked past the gigantic shade trees toward my front door, I thought how sorry I felt for the driver because he was nearly hysterical. And then I felt like a real jerk, and my brain was at the train station.

I'm not sure that enough people know that hysterical or variations like hysterics are fraught with extremely negative origins and meanings. I don't want to give the idea that they are just kind of mean. They are flat-out misogynistic. I didn't intend this post to be a lesson in semantics, but sometimes it's good to know where the words we use come from. Misogyny, for example, means dislike or prejudice (or even hate) against women. Why is hysteria misongynistic? It's pretty simple, really. Its Greek root is hystera, which means uterus. Yes, this word for uncontrollable emotion that can have physical manifestations is based on the Greek word for a uterus.

The concept of women being unable to control their emotions, and this actually being a disease, dates back possibly thousands of years. Women were seen as unable to control their emotions. As far back as 1900 BC/BCE, there exists documentation of the belief that if a woman was having a health problem, it was because her uterus was wandering in her body.  Eventually this turned into a belief that the uterus wasn't wandering, but it was still causing problems. In fact, these problems with the uterus may have been the work of the devil Call your priest or your friendly neighborhood exorcist! Eventually, hysteria became known as a brain or mental health issue. And don't even get me started on the treatments used over the centuries. Suffice it to say that they were often sexual or reproductive in nature.

It has been demonstrated again and again that doctors still seem to have this bias against women and their health issues. If a man has a pain, it is tested and addressed quickly because they are so strong and stoic and if they complain there must be something seriously wrong. If a woman has the same type or intensity of pain, it's often attributed to women having a tendency to whine or complain or be unable to tolerate pain. A common missed diagnosis is endometriosis, because women are seen as too weak to handle the minor pain of menstrual cramps.

In spite of my close relationship with Doctor Mike, I saw this affect our interactions. I think that at times he forgot that I had at least a modicum of intelligence. I also pushed through fatigue even though it was difficult, and had a notoriously high threshold of pain. Seriously, I fractured my tibia and drove myself home, climbed the stairs to my third-floor apartment, and walked into his office the next morning under my own power. I'm also in tune enough with my body to be able to tell when I have pneumonia or pleurisy or just costochondritis. So I found it frustrating when I tried to tell him that there was something wrong with me. I'd bring up the weakness and near collapses and he interrupted, dismissing it as low blood sugar. I finally caved in on one of my visits and told him not to say it was my blood sugar, because it wasn't, and to listen to me instead of dismissing me. And it wasn't my blood sugar, it was my heart.

I get these ideas in my little noggin, and sometimes I get passionate about them. First off, nobody knows your body and how you feel as well as you do, so let your voice be heard. Make your voice be heard. Second, I'm going to try to remove the word hysterical from my vocabulary and replace it with something like frantic. Unless, of course, my uterus is raising a ruckus and really bothering me.

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