adventures in elementary polychromatism

Edited to Explain: This post was written right after a visit to my primary care doctor. The first time I brought up a weird symptom to her, she asked, "Why is this the first I'm hearing of this?" despite the fact that I had only ever seen her...once...before that, and it was about something completely different, and this issue was in my old records. This time, I went through everything I could come up with (and stuff my husband helped me remember) because I'm scared and wanted to know if neurology was the way to go, as had been suggested by my urologist, and her response was, "Well, you should be prepared to hear a neurologist say that coming up with a list this long of stuff that could be explained by lots of things just means you have OCD and need to see a shrink." It took hours to come up with this list, and I only gave it to her because she was annoyed last time that I hadn't been Comprehensive.

It's not a secret (though perhaps it should be) that I went through a bit of a riot grrl phase in college. I knew the white feminism in the genre was pervasive and toxic, but what can I say? Kathleen Hanna's angry little girl sound resonated with the parts of me that were processing an abusive suburban upbringing despite our demographic differences. Anyway, there's a line in a song by the Fakes (a Hanna-driven collaborative project) that says:

You teach me I don't know the things I know.
(I know.)

And that's largely how I feel whenever I go to the doctor. ( Continued after the cut... )