when your body is not your own.

i have friends who have had kids and who have said that after you have a child your body is not your own anymore. it's kind of community property, you no longer have reservations about people seeing it, it's just kind of there. this was exemplified a few weeks ago when a friend (and mom of 2) had some lumps removed from her breast and she just whipped her shirt up and showed us the bruising from the surgery. (we had asked how she was doing and if she was in much pain, so there was a reason for this)and she was like, yeah i just don't care who sees what anymore. i have a friend who's currently 17 weeks pregnant and it's her first kid and we were all looking to see if there was definite baby versus what she calls her 'budda' and i touched her stomach. and after i did it i was immediately like oh my gosh i'm sorry i didn't ask i just touched it and she was like no it's ok don't worry about it. i have another friend who has a toddler(she's still a toddler, right?) and she was at a christmas party and was like 8 months pregnant and another adult was drunk and touched her stomach to move her out of the way. now it's been a few years, and this friend is still annoyed at the drunk lady. it's this weird phenomenon that your body is somehow community property when you're pregnant. strangers think they can touch your stomach and comment about your 'condition.' i was thinking about this today because my dad is sick and this morning he was in a lot of pain and couldn't stand up or sit up and was shaking really badly. so he called his doctor. he waited um about 5 hours for the doctor to call back, through the day he started to feel a bit better, and the doctor finally called back and said oh you're ok it's nothing to worry about. it strikes me as kind of the same thing. once you get sick with some disease, in dad's case cancer, you don't know what's best anymore. you're in a lot of pain? meh, it's ok says the doctor, and you just have to say 'ok' because they know your body better than you do. people poke you and drain you and analyze your blood and know you more intimately that you know yourself. it's weird to think that you're not the expert on your own body. i mean, who knows what i can do better than i do? who knows how much pain is too much for me? it's so weird. so frustrating. i'm ready to be done with this foray into science and medicine.