SEXUALITY, ILLNESS, AND HEALTH: NOT FEELING TOO GOOD BUT HAVING NO DETECTABLE HEALTH PROBLEMS

Medical measurement techniques are all vague estimates of body processes that can never be directly assessed. We can only compare somebody response, count of cells, or appearance of body products with some arbitrary numerical standard. When your “count” falls within pre-established limits, then cosmopolitan medicine says there are “no remarkable findings.” (Actually, the human system is far beyond remarkable, a true, infinitely complex miracle.) Even when medicine says you are fine, you may not “feel good.” Too many times, physicians either ignore the sexual dimensions of our health problems or are too uncomfortable to deal with them. Physician Harold Lief reports that the instance of patient report of sexual difficulties is predicted by the willingness on the part of the physician to talk about this important area of life. Another doctor, Richard Green, writes that to ignore sexual health in attempting to treat any health problem is incomplete, even unethical health care. ‘ ‘Not feeling too good” affects and can be affected by our sexuality.

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