Sex Cells

***Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review. When I saw this ARC, I knew I HAD to read it.***

This book NEEDS to be in the hands of everyone that practices medicine. I truly believe the only folks getting qualified care in this country are well-insured white males. Anyone else - good luck.

This book is more of a technical read but a necessary and eye-opening one. We’ve let this go on too long, y’all. We’ve let the status quo stay the same for too long.

No. More.

Be loud about your symptoms. If a doctor doesn’t listen, go to another one. You have EVERY RIGHT!!

For context, my story -

I spent years being brushed off by doctors. I’ve experienced back and neck pain since I was about 15 years old. Everything from a full ache to sharp, burning, radiating pains that struck out to my arms and legs.

I saw multiple doctors and heard numerous times, with a laugh, “you’re too young for this kind of pain!” (Why do think I’m here???) And others along the lines of “have you tried losing weight” (to a perfectly average size 16 year old) and “you should crunches and strengthen your core!”

At one point, I was even sent to physical therapy where the staff treated me for 4 weeks and said, “there’s not much else we can do for you.”

The years went on and I gave up trying to get any real answers. Instead, a friend talked me into see a chiropractor at the age of 39. So, I went to the one closest to my house. It wasn’t bad by any means but it also didn’t feel personalized at all. This facility literally just lined everyone up for their E-Stim therapy in the same room…in recliners. Considering my lower back was on of the problems it was always difficult for them to put the stim gel pads on me in a sitting position. And it wasn’t comfortable to sit there. Eventually, I took my X-rays and went somewhere else.

Cue me turning 40 this year and, after a little tumble down a few stairs, my chiropractor takes some X-rays of my neck including a few new views she didn’t have before in order to make sure it’s safe to treat me and makes a discovery.

I have spinal stenosis and several bone spurs pressing against my spinal nerve. To the point that I may be looking at surgery within the next year. (When I first started seeing this doctor, she asked if I had been in a major car wreck. I have not.)

TWENTY-FIVE years is how long it took for someone to do the right X-rays. That’s all it took.

As of this point, with my medical history, I refuse to be treated by male doctors because they have such a historical record of brushing women off. Women doctors are not immune, but I do think they are better.

This book makes me sad. And angry. And if I, an insured white woman have been brushed off so much - imagine other marginalized communities? It’s abhorrent to think that we’re living in 2023 and this is how it is. It cannot continue.

This was an informative, but dense read. It was also majorly depressing, if I'm honest. It only reinforced what I already experience as a woman when I try to get healthcare. The book isn't overly long--only 250 pages--but it's both packed with information and also not as detailed as I was expecting. It's essentially an overview of issues found in women's healthcare. I appreciated the inclusion of the issues facing people of different races and ethnicities and also including trans and non-binary folk, but I do wish there were a bit more, especially in regards to transpeople.

In terms of the writing, it was a bit mixed. There were moments where it was very personable and others where it was bogged down by the repeated mentions of the accolades and titles of the various persons and institutions cited in the book. It made the reading experience drag a bit, especially when persons or institutions mentioned in the text previously were mentioned again later in the book with the same long string of titles and accolades before actually getting to the point what was trying to be said. I feel like some of this could've been solved by adding footnotes to clean up some of the extra text while still giving the cited persons their dues.

Overall, though, it was a decent read, I just wish it were a bit more comprehensive and that each section carried equal weight.

I enjoyed this book although its writing seems more akin to an academic paper than what I thought I would be reading. That said, it is FULL of interesting statistics and information regarding the differences in healthcare (diagnosis, treatment, prevention) for biological women vs men - and interestingly, although it is known that there are differences between males and females, the biological sex-based care has been slow to form (if at all).

I found it interesting that females were (and still are) often not included in clinical studies - that the results of clinical studies conducted on men are just arbitrarily applied to women even though there are obvious known differences in our biological make up. Furthermore, if a clinical study includes women, more often than not, all woman are lumped together when there are known differences in various races and social determinants of health for females! The author goes on to explain how properly breaking this down in the research and analysis will lead to stronger health outcomes for all women.

I appreciated the authors commentary on how biological differences between males and females (and even among females with varying socioeconomic backgrounds) - like hormones, metabolism, extra body fat, digestive differences (less gastric acid present in females vs men) affect absorption of medications and the success rate of treatment/prognosis. And although this data has been known/proven, the biological sex of the patient is often not accounted for when prescribing or treating a myriad of conditions. I also wasn’t aware that women are more likely to have addiction issues due to their lower rate of metabolism! It stands to reason that the metabolic differences in drug absorption should play a significant role in dosage and prescriptions - to which it largely hasn’t yet.

There is a lot of information presented but the author did a great job of breaking it down into shorter chapters. I appreciated how the information was compiled and presented and would recommend this book to healthcare professionals as well as people who enjoy reading science based research papers/non-fiction.

Thank you NetGalley for the electronic version of this book in exchange for an honest review.