End the Appointment
Short Story Review: “A Doctor’s Glossary of Terms for the Female Body” by Emma Bolden
“A Doctor’s Glossary of Terms for the Female Body” by Emma Bolden is a tutorial for talking about the female body. It’s not an instruction on how to seriously and informatively discuss medical issues with the patient who lives inside of the female body, but more a listing of euphemisms you may find useful when telling her bad news. That’s right; YOU are a character in this story. You are the one conducting this appointment.
By making YOU a character, Bolden forces the reader to engage in the story AND holds the reader accountable for this absurd medical method. Instead of tackling the problem head-on, you are instructed to dance around it with similes and metaphors. You should bring the patient’s attention back to the Bible. Because, after all, that’s where female patients should find comfort when their doctors fail them, right?
“If her womb grows a tumor instead of a child, say the growth is the size of a grape. The shape of a cluster of grapes. Let your language travel to orchards heavy as blossom, useless as scent. Call the tumor a lemon. An orange. A small or large grapefruit. Encourage her to imagine pain as a harvest. Remind her that the Bible asks us to bear great fruit.”
At the end, you are instructed to compare the problem with her womb to something small so that “…she’ll keep silence when you say there’s nothing you can do.” This stuck out to me. Maybe you’ve seen the recent nurse TikToks that went viral, the ones where nurses joke about patients they think are seeking attention or pain pills or whatever else the nurses find unimportant. These TikToks went viral due to the outburst from hundreds of outraged women who have had their illnesses trivialized for so long that they ended up in horrific pain, in emergency surgery, and worse. This story mirrors their experience perfectly. Sizing the patient down to an orange, a lemon, a grape is one way of controlling her. Of keeping her silent. Because, ultimately, there’s nothing you can do.
“Can do or won’t do?”
Does this story have less to do with the patient’s physical ailments and more to do with your faults as a doctor? As a human? Are these Biblical allusions the best way to comfort female patients? Should the female body be seen as more than just a sack? More than just a building built to house life? These are questions we could ask. But there isn’t an answer because, as the story points out, “A woman’s body is a question that always must curve back her way.”
Read the whole story at the link below, then come back here and let me know what you think. What parts stuck out most to you? What did you think of the language? Did you feel implicated? What did you make of the references to the Bible? Is there a greater theme at play here? Voice your opinion in the comments below!
Link: http://www.pacificareview.com/2019/09/14/doctors-glossary-terms-female-body-emma-bolden/
