Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Make no stray marks

I received a survey from Kaiser Permanente a while back. I finally filled it out tonight. They are doing research on Genes, Environment, and Health. I received the Women's Health Survey.

The initial part of the survey was pretty routine. I answered the usual questions and wrote in 'queer' in the Other (specify): line that allowed an answer other than Hetero, Homo/Les, and Bi. It wasn't until the back page that it asked me at what age I had my first menstrual period. Hmmm. Well, I marked 'Never had a mentrual period'.

The next question asked if I had a menstrual period in the past year. I answered No, but they wanted a reason. Here were my options:

-Natural menopause
-Hysterectomy (Age: )
-Recent pregnancy/breastfeeding
-Medical treatment
-Don't know

The first three really didn't apply, and I know why I haven't had a menstrual cycle in the past year, so I decided to fill in 'medical treatment'. What else was I supposed to say...there was no 'I'm a transsexual' circle to mark and there was not line for 'Other:' If they really want to know, they can contact me and I'll tell them.

It does show, however, one of the bad sides to medical treatment specific to a gender. For instance, FTM's have to worry about their insurance covering hysterectomies for men, and MTF's have to worry about care in case the prostate causes issues later in life. I guess that's one of the things I currently treasure with my doctor...he's cool with the whole transgender thing and I feel he takes excellent care of me. I guess I'm lucky in that regard.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This question comes up for me too occasionally. I had a this funny incident with my regular doctor's partner a year ago when I went in to get antibiotics for a respiratory infection. We chatted a bit and I told him something about my son. Then we proceeded to business. "Last menstrual period?" None. "Number of pregnancies?" None. His jaw dropped. "Oh" he said, "you must have adopted, sorry for prying." I told him I didn't adopt. Sigh. I let him stew for a minute and then told him. He was cool, as I knew he would be. Thank God. The last gynecologist I went to wasn't so cool. I really should try to find another one.