I work in a small rural clinic that offers health care to the small community of Pecos, N.M., population 1,473. We also serve many of the small outlying villages and some patients come in from Santa Fe.
We offer some emergency services ( chain-saw injuries in the Fall and Winter, fish hooks and burns in the summer). We have a substance abuse / Suboxone program, Diabetes program, Chronic Care program and general "Health Maintenance" programs.
We also have a small, on-site pharmacy and can fill most standard prescriptions, and we offer birth control pills, Plan B, and of course, Viagra.
So the recent abortion/ contraceptive uproar got me thinking about the ludicrous dialogue among a lot of aging men about what is O.K for a woman to do with her body. Our medical system reinforces this dialogue by having a blatant double standard when it comes to men and womens sexuality.
A good example of this is all the Viagra, Levitor, and Cyalis prescriptions we regularly renew without any counseling inquiries or physical exams required...They say they need a refill, we refill it.
I thought of a lot of legitimate questions I would like to ask, questions we regularly ask our female patients at a typical OB/GYN check-up or a birth control refill:
Are you married or in a long term relationship-
(If married, we need your wife's presence/ approval of your use of this drug)
How many sexual partners do you have-
Are you prepared to father a child-
WHAT IS THE CONDITION OF YOUR PRIVATE PARTS?
Followed by a thorough exam done EVERY month in order to renew your erectile dysfunction drug...check that prostate, check for lesions, and most important, they should have to prove that they really, really can't get it up- yep, because men can't be trusted to tell the truth about their bodily functions.
That last one is important. I think the proper guidelines should be an inability to rise above the horizontal, plus maybe some sort of "firmness" evaluation and maybe at least 2 impartial witnesses/ evaluators...these details can easily be worked out.
After this monthly check-up, a group decision will be made based on your results, and THEN, and only THEN, can you get your Levitor, Viagra, Cialis.
Good to go until next month, when you get to be "screened" again.
Punitive, yes, but I long to have a man experience a little bit of the personal invasiveness into his sexuality that a woman experiences routinely.
Just saying.
