Sports physicals amount to a way for insurance companies to feel just a little safer about kids running around doing hard work. If you go back twenty or thirty years, they were barely even heard of but now they are common place for almost all teen and college age athletes.
A basis sports physical is meant to check your health to ensure you are able to play the sport of your choice. That amounts to making sure your lungs work fine and that your heart can handle the strain of physical exertion.
Along the way, you make sure there are no big problems looming like brittle bones. And you screen for risk factors for certain diseases.
If all is well, you get a form signed that says you are cleared to play.
But there tends to also be a second part to sports physicals that is harder to understand and accept. It started with guys…
One of the things you need to check for with guys is a hernia. If their abdominal wall isn’t working right, their insides can sneak out between their legs. It’s part of how a guy is made. It makes a lot of sense to check down there on a guy to make sure it isn’t a problem. Even way back when, it was normal for guys to be checked as part of their sports physical. That often meant just dropping their shorts for a minute.
There really wasn’t any thought of doing the same check to a girl. After all, we don’t get hernias in the same way owing to how we are built.
But then two issues came along… the first is the idea of equal rights. How is it fair if guys are checked and girls aren’t? And a second issue… lot of girls avoid pelvic exams at all costs.
Pelvic exams in and of themselves can do a lot of good. They can detect cervical cancer and save your life. But, it’s almost unheard of for a young woman to have cervical cancer.
Then a thought occurred… what if girls had a full exam as part of their sports physical? It would ensure that boys felt that girls were treated equally and it would also get girls used to having a pelvic exam. In that way, when they are older and actually need the exam done, they aren’t as squeamish about having it.
And thus a new idea was born. Most girls now face a pelvic exam as part of their sports physical. Like most new ideas, it isn’t the same everywhere. Your school may have decided to require it in your “best interest”. If they have, the form you were given for your physical will indicated “genitalia” or “pelvic exam” as a section.
Your doctor may have decided its best and conduct a pelvic exam even if your school form doesn’t call for it.
Either way, you should expect there is a reasonable chance you will be having a pelvic exam as part of each sports physical you undergo.
While the health benefits aren’t immediate, it likely isn’t the worst thing to get used to. Later on, it could save your life.
And here is one concept that might help a bit… if your school form requires you to have the full internal exam… all the other girls are having it to. So at least it’s not just you! Sometimes it can feel really nice to be just part of the crowd.
