Stop Being So Needy, Gynos

When’s the last time you kept going back—year after year—to a place where someone told you, repeatedly, how important they are and how negligent you’ve been not to visit more often?

I’m not talking about relatives. I’m talking about the gynecologist.

Every visit feels like a guilt trip wrapped in a lecture, delivered by someone who seems strangely desperate for validation.

Is gynecology the 98-pound weakling of the medical world? Do neurosurgeons and oncologists swagger through the cafeteria, flicking pudding cups at them? Because that would explain a lot.

It’s as if they’re rehearsing their own importance out loud. I’m sitting right here on the paper sheet—that’s proof I think they’re at least mildly essential.

“You should come more often.”

“You should have done this sooner.”

Really? Maybe if your kind didn’t make me want to tunnel through the floor every time I visit, I would have.

In fact, I know I would have.

Back when I didn’t have insurance, a friend recommended a gynecologist she liked. I paid cash to see her—no small thing at the time. And she was wonderful. No lectures, no guilt trips, no attitude. Just a real person doing her job with a sense of ease.

I went back, and back again.

Then on the third visit, she was out on an emergency and her PA filled in. The moment she opened her mouth—yack, yack, yack—there it was. The same tired guilt, the same self-importance, the same weary script.

I never went back.

General practitioners don’t do this.

Between 1992 and 2013, I didn’t have health insurance. When something went wrong, I went to a clinic. Otherwise, I didn’t go. When I finally got a “my doctor,” he didn’t guilt-trip me or puff himself up like a motivational speaker in a lab coat. He just looked at the chart, nodded, and said, “All right, let’s fix this.”

No moral lecture. No need for applause. Just competence and forward motion.

So come on, Gynos—stop being so needy. You’re professionals, remember?