I've started writing my new book...

This is a teaser...a small excerpt from my new book...creative non-fiction about the "Making of a Primary Care Doctor"...This piece will go somewhere in the middle of the book....

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Destiny is 15 years old. She is black. She weighs about 200 pounds and is lying naked from the waist down on the exam table. I can barely tell she is seven months pregnant. She is in Gynecology clinic today for a colposcopy because she had an abnormal PAP smear. A colposcopy is a test in which a doctor places a speculum in a woman’s vagina and applies vinegar to her cervix to better visualize any abnormalities that may need to be biopsied. As a third year medical student in my Gynecology rotation, I am mostly watching colposcopies.


Kathy is a tall, slender 2nd year OB-Gyn resident. She has blond wavy hair that brushes past her shoulders and pretty blue eyes.

“OK, Destiny, I need you to slide down the table so I can put the speculum in,” she instructs. Destiny shifts her large pregnant body a few inches down the table. Her legs are spread wide open and up in stirrups.

“You need to move down a little more.”

Again, Destiny sluggishly lifts her large buttocks against the edge, her dark ebony skin against the rumpled white paper on the exam table. Kathy opens up a large metal speculum—long and round, shiny and cold, and squirts a couple of drops of lube on top of it. She moves it towards Destiny’s vagina. As soon as Kathy touches her legs, Destiny flinches her body away from the edge again. Kathy lets out a droning sigh.

“C’mon! You need to move down again. And stay still.” Destiny inches towards the edge again. Kathy moves the speculum towards her, like a loaded gun. Destiny jumps.

“You need to stay still!” Kathy raises her voice. “You let a penis in there—this is much easier than that!”

My inner eyes open in horror as I take in the scene. My outer eyes scan the tile floor in embarrassment. I wonder how this teenage girl got to be here—on the South Side of Chicago, on the wrong side of the tracks in the journey of life, pregnant and uneducated and very very young. I wonder who the father of the baby is. I wonder if she was raped. Is it ever really consensual sex at age 15? Does a girl really know what she is getting herself into when she lets a penis navigate her most intimate orifice before she is even legally allowed to drive a car? If she were a different race, if her parents were richer, if she had had better access to birth control, would she be lying here pregnant and with an STD with a tall white woman towering over her trying to molest her with a speculum? Most of all, I wonder—is this what I will turn into when I am a certified doctor? I am ashamed of my profession. I am ashamed that I do not have the courage to speak up against this resident to protect this young girl. Under my breath, I promise myself that I will never be this kind of doctor. But I also know that only time will tell.