Book tour, we have lift off! What's Up Down There? Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend hits shelves TOMORROW, Sept 28! Lissa wrote this post today en route to our very first stop on the book tour - Chicago, which as it turns out, has particular meaning to Lissa... Read on to find out!

Returning to the Scene of the Trauma

As I write this, I am on a plane, flying to Chicago where I start my book tour. The irony of this fact is not lost on me. You see, I lived in Chicago for four years while I did my OB/GYN residency at Northwestern. But I haven’t been back in more than a decade. Why? Well, it’s not that I don’t love Chicago. And it’s not that I don’t have good friends there. But my four years of residency were the hardest four years of my life. I honestly think I have post traumatic stress disorder because of my residency. It’s been more than ten years since I finished, and the nightmares only stopped last year.

When you think of a sonogram, you probably think of some grainy, grey-and-white image of your baby’s hand waving at you, labeled with the caption “Hi Mom!” You probably don’t think about the clitoris. But a couple of French doctors do (leave it to the French).

Do you feel tired 24/ 7? Are you so moody that your cocker spaniel is keeping his distance? Is your sex drive in the crapper?  Are you carrying extra weight you can’t seem to shed, no matter how much you diet? Does your energy level drag throughout the day? Are you mentally foggy?  Do you feel like you’ve lost your mojo and can’t get it back?

Why is it that our doctors have become so broken? “Physician heal thyself,” or so they say. But it seems we’ve lost the art of caring for ourselves as a profession. It saddens me deeply. Yesterday, Aviva Romm, a skilled midwife/herbalist/author/artist-turned-Yale medical student called me to process the decisions that lie ahead of her.