My residency prepared me well for a lot. It left me unprepared for what I now see every week. The hot flashes and night sweats. The sleep that falls apart. The brain fog and mood shifts women are told to just push through. And underneath those, the things no one thinks to name: clitoral adhesions that went undiagnosed for years — not because they're rare, but because no one taught me to look for them. The muscle women lose through menopause, about 0.6% a year, that no one warned them was coming. The dryness and pain that never gets asked about, so it never gets addressed.

None of this is fringe. It's women's health — the part that gets handed off, referred out, or skipped, because the training never made room for it.

So I went and learned it. Not because a board required it, but because my patients needed someone who had.