Deborah Copaken: Episode Link

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On this episode, we interview author Deborah Copaken on the failures of the healthcare system for midlife women and her book Lady Parts.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to Hot Flashes and Cool Topics, everybody. I am really thrilled today to have Deborah Copaken on. She is well known for many different writings like Shutter Babe.
And I really want to talk to her today about her book Lady Parts a Memoir because so many things that happen to her in this book and through the health care system to women in general to women that are in our demographic of midlife that I think it’s really important to share this information with our listeners and just how this is not really unusual sadly what happened to her is not unusual so welcome to the show
Deborah. Thank you so much you guys it’s really nice to meet you. They you know your book like I was saying before. it really touches on the struggles that people and particularly women who are well educated have you know public publicly successful you know with writing books tv writing um that are on the brink financially because circumstances and people don’t realize that do you mind sharing a little bit about how this
happened to you and how it is not uncommon? – Sure, I mean, I think we actually have to go back. If I were to revert back in time,
I think it starts with the birth of a child. And the birth of a child, I don’t know what it costs in Tennessee, where you guys are, but in New York City, back in 1995,
it was $9 ,000. $9 ,000. of pocket, that’s not covered by insurance. So I had two kids $9 ,000 each in rapid succession, that’s $18 ,000.
I didn’t even think that that was something that I was going to have to pay, right? Then you’re talking about the cost of childcare, which we have not addressed in this country. Then fast forward several years and I have several serious illnesses.
One of them is called adenoma. which is a lot like endometriosis. It went undiagnosed for 16 years until it was incredibly far along,
and my uterus had to come out. By that point, I’d had another child, and I think in 2006, the cost of a child was $10 ,000, $11 ,000 at the hospital,
right? So you’re talking about great sums, five figure sums of money, just to have a baby, a healthy baby. My babies were okay. They didn’t have to go into the neonatal department or anything like that.
So add on the cost of a major medical operation, the removal of a uterus, add on the cost of childcare,
add on the cost of college tuitions, which I was paying two of them at once, and then add a divorce in there, just for fun, right? And it was like the perfect storm,
you know? It was the perfect storm of, oh my God, I have this and this and this and this. And literally, I was at a farmer’s market one day and I was waiting for all these freelance checks to come in.
And by the way, when you’re working as a freelancer, those checks take a long time to come in, sometimes six months, the cost of health insurance back then.
And we have Obamacare now, which is still expensive. But back then, I was paying $2 ,400 a month to ensure my children and me on Cobra.
There was a job loss in there and suddenly I’m at the farmers market and I’m trying to buy some apples and I just say to myself, “Oh, let me just check Citibank to make sure I have enough cash to cover these apples.” I had $18 in my bank account.
The apples were going to cost six and I thought I cannot spend one third of my wealth [laughs] the time on these apples.
I mean, that was the nadir, right? I mean, I guess there were other nadirs, like one other nadir was, so after I got the hysterectomy, they didn’t take out the cervix,
which they should have. Again, women’s healthcare myths and wrong turns and bad advice.
So I was told to keep it. cervix in because it played a role in sexual pleasure Well, that turned out to be bunk. So five years later that cervix gets Sick it has pre cancer of the cervix.
I have to get that cervix out. I Come home from the hospital things are not right things are not right something’s going on I can tell I am not well. I go to divorce court to fight my own battle ’cause I’m representing myself ’cause I don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer.
And I’m at divorce court, I think it was child support that day and I just was hemorrhaging and feeling really bad. I go to the hospital, I take myself to the emergency room.
They say, oh, we don’t have a speculum here to look inside. You hear some antibiotics, go home. And then a few days later, my daughter, who’s 20 at the time,
found me wandering the apartment in a complete daze with a glass Tupperware container, putting giant blood clots that were falling out of me all over the apartment into this glass container because I wasn’t sure what they were and maybe I needed them.
And then she says, we need to take an ambulance, we need to call 911. I said, don’t you dig I can’t afford that extra $4 ,000 to $10 ,000 that it may cost.
I don’t know that you never know how much those ambulances are going to cost. So we took Uber pool to the emergency room. I mean, just think about this. This is America circa, this was 2017.
That daughter’s now in med school and trying to change this from within. But at the time, I mean, you know, nothing’s changed now. I guess Jill Biden just got, you know, some money to address women’s health,
which, thank goodness. But it’s like the tiniest small step in a giant, giant mountain that we are pushing that sisyphusian rock up over and over again,
and falling back down. That was a long answer to your question. I’m sorry. That is the truth. Yeah. And it’s, it’s a story that we hear from people. time and time again,
that women are either ignored or we ignore our own symptoms because it can’t be that bad. We’re fine or financially we can’t afford it. And the healthcare system is just not catching up and it’s great that we have this research money coming in but where is it gonna be allocated is my question.
And I wanna make sure that it’s like I have any control. over it. I hope that, yes, I’m going to tell Joe, I’m going to call Joe later. No, me too, me too. But I hope that it’s allocated in the proper places because your story is horrible,
but not unique, like horrible for you obviously, but not unique in stories that we have heard. And I think one of the strangest things that stuck in my mind was the fact that one of the reviews of your book,
I think it was New York Times talks about how it might be, you know, the blood might be a little too much if you want to skip the first chapter. Why? Because you don’t want to face it. I mean,
what was the, what, how did you respond to that? I cried, cried. It was like everything that I was discussing in that book was right there in that New York Times review.
And I also couldn’t believe it was written by a woman that worked in a section of the paper that’s no longer there. It was a women’s email.
It went out to women and it was about women’s events and women’s issues and it just seemed so tone -deaf. It also seemed like she hadn’t read the whole book,
frankly. I mean, it just was like, she read chapter one and two and decided that she didn’t like it and didn’t read the rest. I don’t know what to say about that,
other than it made me cry and it made me feel hopeless. – And it makes me angry. – It made me angry too, but more sad than angry.
I try not to get angry anymore because the anger will eat us up from inside. And I turn that anger into writing. – Yeah.
I mean, you know, and you said you had a picture of it like in the book and I’m like, I welcome that photo. I want women to know if this is happening to you.
– Right. other people, I want them to know what to do. And you also talk about the misinformation that you were given about needing your service and that you needed it for sexual pleasure.
And, you know, and we’ve talked to a lot of the women in your book that you talked to, like we’ve had Rachel Rubin on the podcast. I love her. And Neurotrack, we’ve had Ellie,
Ellie, is that right? – Ellie is great, that’s so funny. – And her on as well. – Just completely like by coincidence? – Just coincidental. – Her on, we had, we’ve been with her December,
she was in December. – She was on December and we were talking about their cognitive health scan that they have now for a doctor’s appointment. – And you worked with her as well. And so it’s just,
it’s really, it’s a small little circle. – Oh, is that right? you get into this space, how you talked to each other and all of you all are fighting the good fight.
That’s what I’m like when you’re fighting the good fight. – Well, here’s what worries me about that though. Yes, we’re all fighting the good fight. We’re talking to each other. We all know each other. How can we get the fight beyond our own walls?
That’s really what is at issue here. And when, you know, going back to that New York Times review, when the New York Times… dismisses my blood as gross, literally gross,
then we’re keeping it in the same little circle, right? And one of the best parts of writing this book, the really truly best parts, I get a lot of beautiful emails from women.
And despite how my story is my story, they all say you’ve told my story. I mean, the specificity of my story. made them feel that I had told their specific story.
But what’s amazing is the men who write me and say some version of I had no idea. I had no idea.
And if I could just get this book into the hands of men. Yes, our allies. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is what would be the dream scenario.
But, you know, 80 % of books are bought by women. And so, you know, whatever. We should be gifting them. We maybe I should send Monday Joe Biden now that I’ve finished. You never know.
Another part of the book that I found really interesting is the talk you have about mentorship and how important it is for women. of our demographic to mentor younger women.
And you use the example of Nora Efron for you. Can you tell that story? – Sure, so, well, first of all, let me say that before I was a writer and journalist,
I was a photojournalist, and I found very few female mentors in that field, just ’cause there weren’t any females in that field, except at the time, my friend, Aleksandra Bakian.
and I, and we were buddies, but there just weren’t women in the field back then. So after I wrote “Shutter Babe,” which by the way, I wanted to call either news whore or shudder girl,
I didn’t want “Shutter Babe” because the whole book is about not being the object, like objectifying the men, and then suddenly this title is placed on me.
Anyway, that’s just another story. (laughs) Shutter Babe came out, Nora Ephron, my hero,
my absolute hero, called me on my home phone back before cell phones. Remember home phones? I don’t know if you guys look young, but anyway. Oh no, we’re your age. Wrap that cord around my finger.
Okay. So Nora found my home phone through my friend Meg, I think, and she said, Hi, this is Nora. Is this Deb?
And I said, Yes, come on, Meg, stop pulling my leg. You know, I thought it was my friend makes I knew that she knew her. And she was, No, this is Nora. And I just want to say I really liked your book,
shutter babe, and I’d love to take you out to lunch. Wow. And I. I was speechless. I, you know, I was like, what?
Lunch, you know, just completely, I’ve met many celebrities in my day, but none of, you know, I don’t get nervous around them, but Nora Ephron really is just the woman I’ve looked up to my whole life.
If I, if, you know, when those, those questions, when they ask yo Who would you have at your dinner party? She she’s the one that I don’t have my dinner party And then I got to have my dinner parties and that was amazing because she Created around her There’s a word in Russian called to sofka,
which is like your group your group around you It’s like you have your to sofka in the kitchen is who do you have in your home basically and her to sofka for lack of a better word,
were women and men of all ages. And she would invite us to her house and she would have dinner parties for 20 and everybody would have a name card. They’re two giant round tables ’cause she didn’t believe in square tables or rectangular tables.
So two giant round tables with your name tag and then you had to at dessert move to another table and sit next to somebody else. And then they were games afterwards. And so it was either. charades or running charades or mafia.
And in these games, you really got to know people, you got to see them not as sort of, you know, the celebrities that you see on screen, but as real humans who want to like win at running charades.
And more than that, she would take me out for monthly and sometimes, you know, by monthly lunches. And it was during the lunches that I was working out and I think she could tell that something was going on in my marriage and she was helping me work out and get to the point of acceptance that divorce is not as bad as I thought it would be.
I had to get out of that situation. I had to get my uterus out. I mean, she was this maternal figure that I don’t have in New York. My mom lives in D .C. and she really had to get out of that situation. boys.
She didn’t have any daughters. She was like me, the eldest of four daughters. So we had a lot in common. We were even, and I’m embarrassed to say this, but we were both cheerleaders on our cheerleading squads back in our public high school.
And we just, we just gelled and she changed my life. And when I say changed my life,
she just, she introduced me to people. She helped me edit op -eds that I was writing. I wrote a book review for the New York Times. She helped me edit the,
she would just be like, I would send her an email saying, “Hey, what do you think of this?” And she would send back some notes and, who does that, right? She’s a busy woman. But I wasn’t the only one that she did this to.
She had, Lena Dunham was, one of her mentees and Rebecca, Rebecca Tracer, who’s a really wonderful journalist as well. And Meg Wallitzer,
she just had all these mentees. And I think for her, I mean, in retrospect, she knew she was dying, right? She knew she had this cancer.
And maybe that’s in the end result what she wanted her legacy to be, to sort of place this love all over and let these women know that she cared about them,
that she was thinking about them, that she wanted them to succeed. And also that as important as success is bringing people around you having that dinner,
making the space for social life. Thank you. as good at that as she was at doing the work. I mean, that is amazing, just the gift that she gave to their women up.
And you know, you’re, you know, in your book, you also something that really stuck with me was your father saying about not doing things. That’s blood money. Can you share a little bit about that and how gosh,
that’s so hard to do in this time? The things that present it yourself or were presented to you and you were really trying not to use blood money, could you share that?
– So that began, and I remember this so well, I must have been four or five years old and my dad was just starting at this law firm after going to law school.
Like I was born when my dad was in law school. So they were struggling, right? So he was in law school. and then he was a White House fellow for a year with John, under President Johnson and then he joined this very white shoe law firm called Comington and Burling and one of the first cases they gave to him was a tobacco case and he would have been taking the role of fighting for the tobacco company and he came
home and I remember he was teary about it and he said, “I can’t do this.” And he said, “What would you guys think if I lost my job over this?” And I think my mom was like,
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, right?” And so he refused to take the tobacco case. He just refused. He said, “I cannot play a part of causing cancer in other people.” And so I think it’s sort of a challenge.
They gave him this and they were mad at him. They gave him a pro bono. case that they thought he would just fail at miserably. It was going up against the U .S. Navy. And the U .S. Navy was bombing the island of Culebra off the coast of Puerto Rico.
And people lived there. They were bombing an inhabited island for target practice. And so I guess he took this on pro bono and he just kept fighting and fighting and fighting and watching.
that has affected my life. He eventually got paid a lot of money from the Puerto Rican government and won and they wanted to erect a statue of him and I was there at nine when I was nine years old sort of clapping for him on the on the dais dais as he was he had won his case and was telling all the people of Culebra thank you and so when I’m sitting in a PR firm,
which I had to join. So because I was a not only a single parent, I was a solo parent after my divorce, my ex -husband left, moved across the country, I was on my own paying tuition,
paying for all the kids paying for the apartment, you know, no help at that point. And we were working on a drug that would help people who were addicted to open poop.
And I remember thinking, so it’s come to this. And I just, I couldn’t,
I couldn’t handle the dissense of that. I really kind of feel like I’d rather live in the street than help the sack with it.
more money because they can then push out more drugs on more people and get more people addicted because they can finally poop and they’re not going to be constipated. You know, it just, I really have a hard time doing things that have nefarious ends.
Well, that should be celebrated, not as a negative. I think that that’s… goes to your character. – But then it’s, you know, it’s not, you know, when you’re pushed back.
– No, no, I mean, it has done terrible things for my bottom line. It’s so funny because my partner wrote a “Modern Love” this weekend, and the Daily Mail printed this like fallacious headline saying,
you know, “Top Lawyer and his Millionaire” girlfriend. And I just started laughing. I was like, if only you knew that I one time very recently had $18 and I couldn’t buy a bag of apples.
Like, I mean, the book is is a way of explaining how is it that I have had that what you said at the beginning,
this sort of, I’m a New York Times bestselling author, I’ve written for Emily in Paris, I have all these things that you would think on a resume would allow me a very comfortable life. I feel like I’m struggling every day.
I’m 57 years old and I’m like, can I breathe this month? Can I pay my rent this month? I don’t own anything. I have no assets, you know? But I also have my integrity.
So it’s a trade -off, right? Not always an easy trade -off. though. And I think you also talk about the fact that, you know, at one time you were holding like four different jobs and that stress can affect your health and that you feel like a lot of the illnesses that you had could have been factored in because of stress.
Can you talk about that? Well, you know, what’s interesting is I think that it was a combination of stress and menopause and nobody was saying to me, “Hey, you might be in menopause,” because I’d had my uterus out so early that I didn’t know when I was in menopause.
But a lot of that sleeplessness and a lot of that, all that, I was gonna say a bad word on there, but I’m gonna say, like, you know, stuff, bad word for stuff.
All that stuff that was going on was I’m now positive with a combination of regular old stress and menopause. And, you know, if only somebody had…
told me when I got my uterus out, hey, you might want to go on estrogen. I think I could have avoided it a lot. Like a perfect example is I was getting these terrible migraine headaches starting after my uterus came out.
And I went to a neurologist and I said, hey, you know, I had really bad headaches as a kid. And then I went through puberty and I got my period and I stopped having headaches.
And so we, just sort of forgot about it. And now I don’t have my period anymore. I’m getting headaches. Couldn’t this be related to hormones? And she laughed at me. She,
she laughed at me. She goes, like one of those like, no, sorry. We don’t have any evidence of that. I was like, well, has anybody studied it? And she said, we have no evidence of it. In this very like haughty way.
I was like, well, I will be going to a new doctor. Yeah. And I actually went to a male doctor who was like, yeah, we think it could be, but we don’t have any studies. And they probably do have,
well, I don’t know about the ones with the migraines, but there’s a lot more studies that we’re finding out, which Colleen and I have found from doing the podcast. We didn’t know this until we did the podcast about how little gynecologist are educated in menopause.
– Oh, in med school, yeah, in med school. – I wrote about that in “She Lated Parts 2.” No, it’s crazy. And in fact, when I dropped off my daughter at med school that first day, I said, “Learn about menopause.
“Do everything you can. “And if you don’t learn about it, call me. “I want to know about that because I want to report that.” And she said, “Actually, “University Buffalo has an amazing program “and she learned a lot.” and she’s actually going into family medicine and which that that knowledge will be very useful.
Yes, yeah, and we spoke with someone last week we haven’t aired it yet about she’s been working since the 90s on research around menopause and women’s health,
and she said it is getting better at med schools. Yeah, you used to want to go to a doctor you start listening to me in my Kentucky accent. accent. You just want to go to a doctor that had more experience.” But now she was suggesting,
“You might want to go to the younger doctor because they’re going to have the education there.” And that’s just the whole thing with women’s health. The misinformation out there is so frightening and so behind.
And you address this in your book too, “The Amount of Time.” women wait in an emergency room. I mean, look what happened to you. I mean, you know, it’s crazy. It’s just crazy. I was there all day.
I was a single parent, solo parent. I had to get home to my kid. I gave up after eight hours of being there, you know, we don’t have a speculum here, some antibiotics, you know, and then I went home to die.
Had my daughter not found me, I would have been dead. Yeah. I mean, it’s just crazy. people have got to read this. Like you said, they’ve got to read this part.
This is what’s happening. And the scary thing is, it is not unique. And the whole thing with healthcare is not, insurance is not unique. I just, I hear I texted someone today that was supposed to have surgery and she texted back,
“Oh, I got it, I was in there.” I didn’t get to have my surgery.” Yeah, I just had this. I mean, it wasn’t even an insurance scam.
So I’m wearing hearing aids under here because I lost my hearing to COVID. And there was a simple operation called a balloonu station tube dilation surgery that I was scheduled to have.
I went to the hospital, I’m off my doctor’s scrubbed in. They have the line in my hand, you know, when they put the little, you know, line for the anesthesia. And my doctor,
my surgeon comes in at the last minute, almost in tears. And he’s like, they denied coverage for this operation. I’m like, what do you mean? He’s like, United Health Care, United Health Care,
United, the devil denied coverage. for this surgery. And I said, well, how much does it cost? He said,
well, give her take probably around 40 grand. I was like, bye, goodbye. I don’t, you know. – Yeah, it’s crazy. I know this is just like my mother -in -law had knee replacements and she threw a blood clot and the ambulance driver,
which probably cost her $4 ,000 to pick her up from where she was. where she had to go back to the hospital, said, “When insurance denies you,
ask for the medical background of the person making the decision on your insurance.” And I actually did call once. I had to wear, and you had to wear a halter monitor.
– That’s a monitor, yes. – Yeah. And they weren’t going to pay it, even though my doctor wanted me to wear it. And I was only like 30 -something at the time, and I did call at our– it and they paid it.
I cannot believe they paid it. Yeah, so, but it’s just things like this that happen all the time that put women, particularly women, it happens to men too,
but they put women in these positions where they can’t pull ahead. Just like you said, you’re just like you’re swimming upstream. – You’re swimming upstream. And you know,
I look at, for example, I lived in Paris. from 1988 to ’92 and I never paid a healthcare bill. I never paid a doctor bill there. And I look at my friend,
Marion, who is dealing with breast cancer there and she has not paid a bill, you know, she goes for radiation and chemo and all these things. And it’s just like, she’s not worrying about the money.
She’s worrying about staying alive, right? That’s what you should be worried about. But when I got… stage zero breast cancer, which they don’t even call breast cancer anymore, so I feel bad even calling it breast cancer, but DCIS, ductal carcinoma in situ,
which is a tiny little lump that has cancerous cells in it. When I got that, I didn’t have enough money to do the follow -up to make sure that the lump was gone.
I had to go, initially when I felt something there, I had to go to the Harlem breast center. because I didn’t have insurance. So I had to get like a free mammogram, which weren’t,
now it’s easier to get a free mammogram back than it wasn’t. But just all these, there’s all these barriers to women’s health. Not to mention, you know, this abnormal meiosis I was talking about earlier that took 16 years to diagnose.
Why wasn’t anyone asking me like, well, how are your periods? Are they bad? Are they really bad? And why did it take my family practitioner looking at my blood and finding that my hemoglobin was a seven,
which is like you’re barely standing at a seven to say, huh, what’s going on here? He had the test redone ’cause he couldn’t believe it was so low. And then, then we started asking the questions about what was going on and we found that I had this,
you know, my uterus was like this big when I finally… took it out full of disease And you know, it’s you know Another thing you said was how would you know what was normal?
Yeah, you know, you know, you mentioned that the book I didn’t know what was normal. I thought, you know What’s normal because we’re not having these conversations with each other about what’s a normal period what right and we weren’t and before I had a diva cup because I couldn’t wear tampons anymore because forget it they were not going to staunch that flow but before I started wearing a diva cup and could measure
ounce wise how much was coming out how much blood was coming out I had no idea and so when I say oh I’m producing an ounce of blood every half hour my doctor’s like what because you’re only supposed to produce an ounce of blood throughout your whole period well who knew right – What do you hope in reading the book,
and well, really in writing the book, what do you hope that women take away from it? – I think the most important thing that a woman could take away from this book is learning how to self -advocate.
And I say that having gone through this so many times and finding even my own self, even after writing this book, having a difficult time. self -advocating,
I was recently with a male urologist who was completely gaslighting me, and I had to put on my lady part’s brain and be like, “He’s lying. He’s lying.
He’s telling me to take a bleach bath.” I’m like, “I don’t think that’s good for the vulva.” Maybe for your male patients, but I don’t think that’s good for my vagina.
for my vagina, I’m sorry. Like, and then I went back to my gynecologist, she was like, oh, God, no, no, don’t take a bleach bath. But self -advocate,
self -advocate, self -advocate. Constantly ask yourself, is this doctor well -trained in the thing that I’m going to him for? Constantly seek a second opinion.
Always do research. and don’t do this kind of crazy Google research. Go to Mayo Clinic, go to the real websites that give you actual information. Because if you go on the crazy websites,
you know what I’m talking about. You’re gonna be told like, drink some milk and stand on your head and everything will be gone. No, don’t do that. Go to well -established websites that have accurate information.
And even when you don’t know what you’re talking about, I just did an interview with Auburn Blooming who wrote this book called Estrogen Matters.
And he takes the Women’s Health Initiative to task and says this data was not read correctly. It was deliberately misinterpreted,
deliberately misinterpreted to, say, estrogen. causes breast cancer. And he said that has caused an entire generation of women to lose out on the benefits of estrogen.
My mother’s poor, my mother’s generation lost out. You know, she’s 81 years old, she was taken off estrogen. She lost out. Right. Yeah, my mother in law as well.
I mean, my mother didn’t go on it either, but she was a generation ahead that my mother in law quit. She didn’t consult a doctor. She didn’t, she didn’t have a history in her family anyway,
but she just stopped. And I mean osteoporosis, heart health, brain health, everything involved. Oh, I was just diagnosed with osteoporosis and that was in June and I still haven’t had my appointment with an endocrinologist.
I could only get one in March. So soon, I think it’s next week. – You’ll have to let us know. – I mean, like why is that so hard too, you know? And also,
why wasn’t I put on estrogen when I got my uterus out? And maybe we could have avoided this osteoporosis. I was off of estrogen for 10 years before the UTIs,
the headaches, all this stuff made me go seek out what was happening. – I’m doing a lot of gesturing, but, you know, what I mean? Well, because we all get frustrated and it’s really important that the few expert voices out there get spread.
You know what I mean? Like we need to tell, well, did you have you looked up this doctor? Have you looked up that doctor? Go on, you know, menopause .org because it is the smaller group of experts that really know what to do that are screaming it,
but none of people are here. So hopefully this, your book and your stories, they, you know, get women excited to be their own advocates because it’s really important.
You know, it’s your body, it’s your health, it’s your life. – Yeah, totally. And healthcare is about economic power as well. – Spaces. – They are tied together.
Female health and economic power. And there is a reason why. the Republicans are trying to take away IVF right now. It’s all about birth control. They’re going after your birth control,
hoard it. I mean, that’s what I want to tell my daughter, hoard your birth control because I see this going in a terrible place very soon. And birth control is economic power,
period. And then they’re going to charge you 9 ,000 or 12 ,000. to have the baby and then it just keeps rolling. No, no, they’re pro -life up to the point where the baby’s born and then they don’t care.
Then they don’t care. Yeah, exactly. Baby’s born, see you by, you know. Yeah, yeah. So it is a very scary time and it’s,
you know, I was talking with Colleen this morning and I said I wish and actually was trying to find, is there a foundation after reading your book it really made me think about is there a foundation that helps women pay for the menopausal care pay for it like you know you we do have menopause .org that does great resource and let you know what doctors in your area are menopause specialists they’re certified menopause
but are there is there anything out there? for women to help them with menopause care? And I’m still looking, so. – So I once did,
I did some research. Well, there is no organization that I know of, but when I went to Paris to visit my friend with breast cancer, I went around to various pharmacies and I was asking how much,
you know, vaginal estrogen costs for UTIs. And it’s like, it’s nominal, it’s all nominal. And I just, I have a friend who just like brings it back from France,
you know, because it’s, and the crazy thing is, you know, my partner’s Viagra is 75 cents a month. And I’m paying upwards of $200 a month in, you know,
in systemic estrogen plus vaginal estrogen, which I cannot live healthily without. Because the Anabot? that keep building up for the UTI I have one antibiotic left that’s it I am I have that in the book and you told the doctor and they wouldn’t listen to you there’s so many layers to this conversation honestly it’s yeah it’s it’s we appreciate you writing this book because it needs to be read and you know it’s funny
when it first came out I saw it and I was like, I’ve got it. I’ve got to contact her. And then I don’t even know what happened in between. And then I’m like, all the book on the shelf.
And I was like, Oh, I was at Shakespeare. And I was like, Oh, and then I tell him, Paulie, I went, book downloaded, what’s wrong with me?
And then it was like, Okay, I’m going to contact, I’m going to get in touch. with them. Well, thank you for doing that, because I what I love actually is the books that have long legs like that. So, you know,
Shutter Bay, for example, I still get letters from photo students or people that got into photography or people like that read it 10 years ago. I love that something that you can write, you know, the book came out in 2021,
we’re now talking in 2024. Thank you guys for reaching out because it’s not just when the book comes out that we have to be talking about the book, but it’s not just when the book comes out that we have to be talking able to read at any time and still understand what’s going on because Lord knows nothing’s changed since that but that’s true.
Yeah, hopefully it will change soon that would be amazing. >> But thank you so much that for coming on the show today we appreciate it. >> Thank you so much make sure to check out Lady Parts guys we will talk to you next time thank you so much