I'm a girl, so I just wanna have fun.

Take doctors. Please. (Sorry about that.) Sometimes, I just want them to tell me what to do. I may not do it. In fact, I probably won't. But I want an opinion, not a bunch of options, which will necessitate yet another task in my life: doing the research. 

Oprah says that this is what we all must do with hormone replacement therapy, among other things.  And who can argue with Oprah?

But HRT: What a can of worms! According to the "experts," it could be good, it could be bad, it could be sorta good or sorta bad, or good in some ways but not in others, and good for some women but not for others, or maybe it's only good for Jackie Mason . . .  And in the final analysis, you have to figure it out for yourself.

It's like playing doctor – without benefits . . .

First they told us that taking hormones  was the best thing since white bread. Scratch that: white bread has been discredited. Don't eat white bread. Avoid white bread like the plague. Try whole wheat. "The best thing since" — what, ice cream? That's bad for you too, but too good to discredit.

Anyway, HRT was supposed to be a Magic Bullet, a miracle drug that prevented heart attacks and strokes and would keep your skin feeling smooth and your body feeling sexy.

Then there was The Study. The one by the Women's Health Initiative, which reported all kinds of Dire Consequences. HRT increased your chances of getting heart disease and strokes, not to mention cancer, and didn't do all that much for your complexion. If you felt younger, that was all in your mind. It was a dangerous, evil drug. Invented by men. Of course, the research was only done with one type of hormone therapy, and some of the findings are disputed by some of the authorities . . .

Meanwhile, some of us were having hot flashes. They are nasty things, these flashes of hotness. First of all, they don't pass in a flash. They last a while, long enough to ruin a meeting, a date, your day. Sometimes they are short, but come and go in cycles, as if a person inside your body went beserk and started turning the heat switch on and off. Are we having fun yet?

HRT takes care of those flashes, in a flash. It also help maintain bone mass, so they won't thin out as much and you're less likely to get osteoporosis and be all hunch-backed. But there's those sneaky strokes lurking in the background.

So at present, some doctors prescribe HRT, some proscribe it; most say it's up to you.

Up to me! What do I know about this? Only what I read, which did I mention, is confusing and contradictory!

It's not just HRT. And it affects guys too.

Doctors are hesitant to give definitive advice about all sorts of things, and leave a lot of decisions to the patient. Sigh. It is not for nothing that you are called a "patient." But it's not the doctors' fault. Think of the malpractice insurance they have to pay (outrageous!) just to protect themselves from lawsuits by cranky patients like us. They have to be careful about what they say.

So now, along with all the other things we do  — and I'd like to strangle the person who invented multi-tasking! —we have the added task of making all these decisions.

I want to walk into a doctor's office with Cyndi Lauper at my side and ask for an answer, not a series of options. I'll do options on the stock market. Maybe. But first I'll ask my stockbroker. And he better have an answer. Even if it's wrong, it won't be a another goddamn task, like looking up a company's fundamentals, whatever that means, which I'll have to do at the same time I'm researching HRT: multi-tasking at its most heinous.

Can't we go back to one task at a time, to getting answers rather than questions that we have to answer ourselves? Do we always have to be multi-tasking? Or even tasking?

And more important, can't a girl have a little fun around here?

Maybe I should check with Dr. Oz . . .

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