I have this friend who had a chronic terrible itchy horrible nightmarish recurring yeast infection for 3 years. Well, actually she thought it was a yeast infection, but she kept going to the doctor and the yeast infection culture kept coming back negative. He ran a bunch of tests and she tested negative for all the other vaginal infections as well. She was constantly spending money to try the Diflucan and the over the counter yeast infection medicine and none of it was really helping.

She noticed that it always flared up after sex. She started to think maybe it was psychosomatic, you know maybe her vagina was just getting pissed off about the nature of its sex life or something. Like that Sex in the City episode where Charlotte’s vagina gets depressed? Like that. Her vagina felt angry and pissed off more than depressed. It would wake her in the night screaming and agitated. This problem with her vagina was really getting to her, leaking into her personality and making her more frustrated and agitated than normal. Hell, can you imagine how frustrated and upset you’d be if YOU had an incurable yeast infection for 3 years?

Finally, after a couple of years of Ob/GYN appointments the doctor tells her that he’s giving her a prescription steroid – finally relief. The prescription was called clotrimazole.

A few months later her baby got a terrible diaper rash. The nurse said to go get Lotramine AF for his rash. The nurse also happens to mention, if it’s cheaper, she should buy the jock itch cream because it’s the exact same ingredients.

So she’s comparing prices and reads the ingredients and sees the familiar word clotrimazole on the jock itch cream. The same stuff her doctor prescribed for her itchy irritated vagina.

She goes home and asks her husband, Honey, do you have jock itch?

Yeah, why do you ask? he says.

We’re not having sex again until you go get a prescription for jock itch, she tells him.

There are three lessons to this story:

*Sometimes what feels like a chronic yeast infection could be jock itch being passed back and forth between you and your partner. Try the Lotrimin isle.
*A terrible diaper rash may also be jock itch, try the Lotrimin isle.
*For some reason, even the OB/GYN, a man specializing in the vagina and used to talking about a vagina's issues, was too embarrassed to tell the woman her diagnosis.

More candid talk about the vagina can only be more empowering for women and girls.

I recieved an email is from MoveOn.org, a political action group monitoring healthcare. Right now Congress is deciding whether to a) take away healthcare from millions of children or b)allow millions more children access to healthcare.

No girl can be empowered if she can't even go to the doctor for her vacinations or minor injuries. No parent can be empowered if they feel they can't afford to take their kids to the doctor. Congress has until September to make a decision and they need to hear from you. As a citizen you have the right, and the responsibility, to make it known what you expect of them.

Sending petitions does send a message to Congress. They may not know your personal name, but they will know that millions of Americans are tired of seeing children go without healthcare.

Click on this link to encourage congress to vote to expand, rather than eliminate, healthcare for children.

If you're like me and you think perhaps signing a petition won't matter enough, you can also send a letter directly to your elected officials at Congress.org.

My letter said:

I expect you to vote in favor of expanding children's health care. We're a nation of Christians and Christians are supposed to care for others and help take care of others. There is no pursuit of happiness if you, or your children are sick. We, as a nation, are not designed to make sure insurance companies and doctors make more money. We, as a nation, are designed to take care of the people. A nation of the people, governed by the people, for the people is a nation that should take care of its people. Health care for the middle class is getting way too expensive, even for the insured. I expect you to pass the SCHIP resolution to expand coverage to more children. If you do not, you will lose my vote and anyone I can pursuade to join me.

Sincerely, Tracee Sioux

Feel free to copy and paste it into your own letter at Congress.org.

If I thought I could get away with it, I wouldn't have told her she had the option of cheerleading. She's too smart to fall for that kind of crap. Instead, I listed the options.

She gave me a sly smile, knowing I would disapprove, and said, I want to do the cheerleading.

Have you ever wondered why girls should be cheering for boys, but boys don't cheer for girls? Do you think that's okay?

Mama, when I went to watch Eric play basketball Emma was cheering for a girls' basketball team.

Are you sure?

Well, you weren't there, but they had girls playing basketball and I think Emma was cheering for that team.

Do you think it's fair that only boys are allowed to play football but girls stand on the side and cheer for them?

I don't even want to play football, she pointed out.

When Emma took cheerleading, she informed me, they didn't wear belly shirts, they wore long ones and I don't think they did anything imapropriate.

My husband didn't think it was a big deal. My friend thought I was being too extreme. Both pointed out that boys cheer these days too. The difference is, there are not entire scantily clad gangs of boys cheering for the girls' teams.

In the end, neither argument swayed me in favor of cheerleading. What did sway me is that my particular girl wants to try it. She thinks it will be fun.

I decided it would be more empowering for her to be able to make her own decision about which sport to try than it would be for me to forbid cheerleading on a feminist principle.

She's just a different kind of girl than I was. She's more of a girly kind and I was more of a tom-boy. But, I don't think it would be empowering to make her feel bad about being a girly-girl.

The more I thought about it, I could trace my negative feelings about cheerleading back to the time my parents told me we were moving again to a town with a small enough high school, where I could make it as a cheerleader.

Upset about the umpteenth move, there I stood dressed head-to-toe in black, pale skin, red lipstick totally Mod screaming, "Why would I want to be a cheerleader?" What I really wanted to articulate was, "Have we met? Do you know anything about me at all?"

So, to avoid a similar episode with my daughter, I'll acknowledge that she is the kind of girl who thinks being a cheerleader is fun. And I'm going to get okay with that.

I did some research and according to the Official Cheerleader's Handbook, cheerleading was invented at Princeton in the 1860s by men. They didn't let girls do it until the 1920s when they added gymnastics and tumbling at the University of Minnesota. It was World War II, and no boys being available, that transitioned the sport to where 90% of cheerleaders became female.

Well, what if you highly suspect that the hysterical sobbing was just a demand for attention after she’d been practically slathered in attention while on vacation? What if you are being dragged away from work by pseudo-sobbing and almost pain? What if you keep remembering the dismissive way your own parents reacted whenever you felt pain and how devaluing it is to hear, “Oh, it doesn’t hurt that bad, you’re just faking it.”

As always I bring old issues to the table and it deeply effects the current situation. My husband was unsympathetic to my empathy for her pain and my unwillingness to simply ignore and dismiss it. He believes my reaction to her hysterical sobbing about her foot should have ended with, “it doesn’t hurt that bad.” Then refusing to discuss it further by ignoring all attempts at attention-getting. What he doesn’t understand is that was my first tactic.

However, after several hours of declared pain (actually 5 days) I started to think, “what if I’m wrong? What if it is broken? What if she remembers this forever and then brings it up for the rest of her life – the time her foot was broken and mom wouldn’t take her to the doctor?” In fact, my cousin remarked, (just minutes after my daughter jumped from the top of the stairs and missed the bean bag) “I’m two for two in telling them to suck it up and having it turn out to be broken.” She’s a pediatric nurse, so I asked her how I could tell. “You can’t, it has to be x-rayed.” Her son, wearing a toe brace, made it known this kind of thing isn't easily forgotten.

So, there I sat in the waiting room, knowing I was being played for attention and utterly furious about it. The longer I sat there the more furious I became. Then I realized my anger wasn’t really about my daughter, who is, after all, only 5-years-old and can’t discern the difference between “suck it up” pain and “go to the doctor “ pain.

My real issue is with the relationship the insured middle-class has with at the whole medical racket in general.

This is one of the ways we stay stuck, I thought. The reason we never get ahead is because I’m constantly sitting in these offices waiting for more unplanned medical bills. It’s never the co-pay is it? Well, that’s only $25. That can be absorbed. It’s all the extra crap they throw on for a couple hundred extra dollars that ruin a budget quick as light.

The doctor came in and vaguely, in a around about way, said that it probably wasn’t broken. But, he would hesitate to send me home without x-rays. “And how much is that going to cost?” I wanted to know. I’m not being sarcastic. I really, actually, want to know what the price per x-ray is. I think I’m entitled to such information considering I’m going to be required to pay the bill. I think I should have a right to assess the necessity of medical services based, in part, on the price of such services counterbalanced by the likelihood of there being a break.

Am I the only person in America who thinks doctors, clinics and hospitals should be required to disclose their prices, like every other industry in America? It’s illegal for my mechanic not to disclose his prices or give me a reasonably accurate estimate. Hairdressers post their prices on the wall. Have you ever asked a medical professional for a copy of their price sheet? They will let hell freeze over before any such information is handed over. Evidently it's impossible to tell what the actual price of medical procedures is until the procedure is over.

Of course the doctor said he "doesn’t know." Which, I personally, think is absurd. It is his business isn’t it? He or she does make a living off ordering medical procedures like x-rays. Wouldn’t you think you would take the time to figure out the actual price or at least a general going rate of an x-ray? I have yet to meet a doctor who actually knows what they are charging for any procedure. And let me assure you, I ask every single time. Every single time, they don’t know and they always, every time respond the same way:

“Aren’t you insured?” Or some variation like this doctor who asked if I was “underinsured” or they say, “I would imagine that your insurance covers it.”

All of which infuriates me because as I said before, what my insurance covers is relative. Relative in the sense that my insurance may cover certain procedures 80/20, but 20% of $1,000 is still $200 that I didn’t budget. Is that going to make me go bankrupt? Of course not. But it will throw our family finances off for this month and the next. That’s a couple of months we don’t save for a house, those are months we “cut back” on something else.

Then there are always the “I had my buddy look at it” bills. When I go to my hairdresser and she asks her assistant or co-worker to check out a color shade do I get a bill from her co-worker? No, I do not. When my mechanic asks his buddy to help him pull the engine from my car so he can work on it do I get a bill from his buddy? No way. So why is it acceptable for everyone in the radiologists’ office to gather around my x-ray, in which there is nothing suspicious or questionable and then individually send me a bill? Why is that ethical? Why should I pay for opinions I’ve never authorized? (Oh, but I did sign the blanket permission to treat form in order to be seen at all.)

This happened when my baby was born, this happened when the doctor ordered an MRI on me for unexplained dizziness, extra doctors and nurses send me bills when I get lab work done to test my iron levels. It happens so regularly that I believe it’s just considered “industry standard.” Add an extra $60. And if it is brokent you can count on a charge not only for the foot brace or cast, but the extra bill for whoever showed you how to put it on. God only knows whether that will be under or over $200 more.

Are all medical professionals sleazy scammers just trying to make a greedy buck? No, of course not. The doctor is motivated to order the x-rays because he doesn’t want to get sued for sending my kid home with a broken foot. As evidenced by the fact that he made it a point to tell me he was noting, “Mother refused x-rays” on the chart. He said, “Usually, I think people come to see me because they want me to order the x-ray.”

Well, I came because I want you to tell me that her foot is bruised and will feel better in a few days. I’d like to skip the unknown and unplanned costs associated with any x-rays.

The radiologists aren’t evil or malicious either. Nor are the medical billing managers.

There is no price sheet for procedures in medical offices.

There are deals made with insurance companies for how much doctors are allowed to bill them and bill the patient. The actual cost of labor and materials it takes to x-ray my daughter’s foot doesn’t have any relation to how much I’ll be billed.

The price is different for me than it is for you. The price is relative to what kind of deal the insurance company can make with the clinic’s billing staff (evidently, no doctors are involved in these negotiations because none of them have any idea how much any service costs). But their rules and regulations are so convoluted that medical professionals are, I would imagine, as mystified and frustrated as anyone else.

This is not evidence of a healthy medical system. This is evidence of a system in which no one, except the insurance company, is being served. The American people do not exist to serve insurance companies. It should be the other way around, the medical system in America should serve the people of America.

It’s NEVER just the copay. If it were, then I’d just suck it up.

I find myself in a mothering predicament concerning the body weight and body image of my 5-year-old daughter.

My goal as a parent has always been to give my daughter a healthy body image. Make her feel like her body is exactly right, just as God gave it to her. Something to be taken care of, but not something to be obsessed about. At the same time, I didn't want to be burdened with a fickle eater. In other words, she eats what I make.

Last October the pediatrician told me Ainsley was in the "red zone" for her BMI. My goal, she said, was to keep her the same weight until the next October.

The "red zone" sounded dangerous and a lot like being overweight to me. While, she doesn't seem chubby or fat to my eyes, I don't like the sound of that at all. I just took her to the doctor for something unrelated and she has gained 3 pounds over the last 9 months, which alarms me.

I did some research and this is how the "red zone" is being explained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

"Based on the height and weight entered, the BMI is 18.6, placing the BMI-for-age at the 94th percentile for girls aged 5 years 9 months. This child is at risk of becoming overweight.

Although not overweight right now, this child has the potential for becoming overweight so prevention of excess weight gain is important. Children and teens should NOT be placed on a weight reduction diet without the consultation of a health care provider."

It seems difficult for me, as a mother, to determine exactly what action I should take about this. I admit to having been judgemental about mothers who refuse to allow their children sugar or sodas at birthday parties. The sugar-nazi mom always seemed to me over-controlling and over-anxious about every little thing their children put in their mouths. Of course, their children are probably not in the BMI "red zone." Mine is. So, now I feel bad about being judgemental about snack zealousness. I'm sorry.

Surely no one would believe that a child who loves, and I do mean loves, vegetables and fruit over anything else would be in the "red zone." I have the type of child who begs me for the giant bag of baby spinach and profusely thanks me for the frozen fruit and carrot sticks in the grocery cart. I'm not kidding. She knows what is healthy. She chooses healthy food for most snacks. We go through a buffet line and she fills her plate with veggies and fruits. I buy the "healthier" snacks like baked chips and nuts and fruit and say "no" at least half the time to her requests. I don't even buy juice to encourage more water drinking.

She's also not a huge television watcher. I admit that she's probably more sedentary than she should be. She enjoys academic kinds of fun, reading and writing and doing math puzzles. Seriously.

I do find myself struggling with an antiquated food ideology too. We regularly tell her to "finish your food," or "stop goofing off and sit down and eat." Mainly because you can't imagine how annoying it is to hear complaints of "I'm hungry" every half hour. I really need to learn to say, "too bad." Then I feel like a total hypocrite for snacking down on some baked chips or a small square of dark chocolate and not sharing.

There are a million reasons for not wanting your child to be overweight, not the least of which is this study in Radiancemagazine.com: “In a study done with six-year-old children, they were shown silhouettes of different people, then asked to talk about them. The children consistently labeled a silhouette of a fat child as ‘stupid, dirty, lazy, slow, etc.,’ regardless of the body size of the child identified in the picture." The same study provided evidence that teachers and other adults feel exactly the same way about overweight children.

The same article on MSNBC.com sites this: Study statistics are startling. According to BodyImageHealth.org, “almost half of normal-weight third- to sixth-grade girls say they want to be thinner; a third have already restricted their eating to lose weight, and 78 percent say they are very afraid of becoming fat.” How children view themselves is strongly influenced by parental body image, and often this is set by the age of six.

I must point out the connection here. Technically, my daughter is still in the NORMAL weight category. Yet, I've been warned by the pediatrician that I need to watch her weight and she's been put in an alarming sounding "red zone." No one is ever in a good place, an okay place, or a healthy place if they are in the "red zone." Why would you put such a dramatic color to something that is probably no big deal. Yellow would be a more appropriate color, or maybe a lovely orange. Almost alarming, but not quite. It seems logical that if the pediatrician persists in putting her in the "red zone" through the third-grade that she will pick up on my (given to me by the pediatrician) anxiety about her body weight and my monitoring of her food and activity and feel like she should be thinner. Of course she's going to be "very afraid of becoming fat."

After giving the issue a lot of thought I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'll make a few changes to her activity level, no reading until she's run around the house at least three times. I've got to put my foot down somewhere or she'll be loathed by the other children and teachers.

Seriously, it's important to keep in mind that the "red zone" is still normal. There's nothing necessarily "wrong" with being on the larger side of being a normal child. I blame this on over correction of the child obesity problem. The medical profession is rightly concerned that so many children really are at an all time high for unhealthy weight. They are trying to prevent my daughter from actually having an issue by giving me a red flag "look out, potential problems ahead."

But, using words like lose weight, watching your weight, too big, chubby, fat, and all other size-conscious words would be a huge mistake. There is potential to turn a minor potential issue into a major problem of body image.

I'll heed their warning by sucking it up and sharing my expensive diet foods. I'll say "no" to 75% of her snack requests rather than just half of them. My husband and I will stop insisting that she "finish eating what's on her plate" (Seriously, come on, it's hard not to parrot the advice our parents gave us). I'll suck it up and pay for a few more exercise camps to tide us over until soccer season starts. Maybe I'll get my bike fixed and take her on a bike ride once a week. I'll take time away from work to take her to the pool several times a week.

But, I will not mention to her that she is in any body weight red zone. That would be a terrible idea which will make her feel perpetually overweight or in danger of becoming perpetually overweight for the rest of her life.

I got this email from Population Connection, www.populationconnection.com, a watchdog group that monitors legislation concerning reproductive issues in the United States and around the world.

"Dear Tracee,
We wanted to update you about recent developments in the House of Representatives. Last Thursday, the House voted to exempt shipments of contraceptives from the provisions of the global gag rule. Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) offered language which would authorize the change. Population Connection urged a "yes" vote on the provision. It passed, 223-201. Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) then proposed an amendment to strike the new regulation. Population Connection urged a "no" vote on their amendment. That amendment failed, 205-218. That means there were 5 representatives who voted to change the regulation, and then immediately voted to change it back! In other words, they voted for it before they voted against it!"

In plain words, more girls and women in third world countries will now be empowered with contraception. That's a good thing!

Government action gets so convoluted with sneaky amendments and provisions stuck in seemingly unrelated legislation. It's common practice. Which is why most Americans feel unempowered when it comes to creating change in the government. That's why I like an email like this from a watchdog group every now and then. It helps me discipher some of the "we snuck it in" going on in congress. It's my right to know and, I think, my resposibility to find out. Sometimes that gets a little tricky.

Also, it allows me to track how my representatives are voting, which helps me see through campaign propaganda. Take this provision about the Global Gag Rule, for instance, why would Stupak and Smith oppose contraception? I think issues get turned to black and white or Rowe vs. Wade very easily. But, the reality is that though Stupak and Smith probably run on a Pro-Life platform, it's unlikely the majority of their voters are so extreme as to be anti-contraception. There IS a difference.

In fact there are a lot of differences: 1. contraception empowers girls and women, 2. paying for contraception is cheaper than paying for AIDs and HIV treatment or feeding orphans, 3. we shouldn't morally legislate for the whole world or they will hate us (remember those terrorists?).

I encourage you to find a watch dog group that monitors an issue you care about. Maybe healthcare? Then take action with a letter here or there to make a difference in government.