All of my women readers will be able to relate to this. Hopefully my male readers find this informative and funny and maybe walk away with a little more sympathy for us girls.
For those who didn't get the joke, a "Gynocerous" is the Dorkanese word for an OB/GYN (Obstetrics/Gynecologist) or, in plain English, "the girl doctor." You know, the doctor that specializes in women's health issues and where we go to get our "special exams."
Today was my 6 month visit. If all goes well, I get to go back to going once a year. About 2 years ago I was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous condition known as Cervical Interepethelial Neoplaisia, which operates in various stages depending on the level of severity. Stage 4 is Cervical Cancer, which killed my Aunt a few months ago. But CIN is not a death sentence, and it clears up if it doesn't progress into the next stage. I was diagnosed with Stage 1 which hasn't progressed at all in the last 2 years and this visit was to make sure it had cleared up, as my last few visits looked promising. I'll know in 2 weeks.
So anyway, I'm used to checking in at the Women's Center in the Medical Office Building at Kaiser in Baldwin Park, then heading upstairs and waiting in a tiny, windowless waiting room near Pediatrics. I always used to think the walk past Pediatrics was funny in a morbid sort of way, as each visit would tell me whether or not my reproductive organs were going to kill me or not, or whether they would someday render me barren. I used to say to myself "Why not just walk me past Oncology?"
Normally I miss the Baldwin Park Boulevard exit off the 10 freeway and end up getting lost on the way there and having to turn around. Today the exit on the westbound side of the freeway was just flat out closed, so I still had to get off and turn around just as if I had gotten lost. I find a parking spot WAY in the back (I've learned to not even mess with the parking structure) and I rush over to where I am used to checking in.
Kaiser Card, ID and Debit Card in hand I approach the counter. She takes my info and then tells me that I NOW have to go across the courtyard to the Hospital Building, go up to the 3rd floor and go to Module 1 instead. Grrrr...fine. Off I go.
The Hospital Building is shaped wonky. There's a round lobby area with arms that come off it. One arm goes to the ER, one to some elevators that lead up to the different hospital floors, one goes to Radiology and then some other arms go who knows where. I only know the parts that I have been to, so I know where the ER, Radiology and Urgent Care are and that's about it. In the lobby there are these water features that look like white walls with water running down then and someone is blasting bad, lounge-style piano music over the sound system. I am not in the mood today.
After standing in the lobby looking at the different signs above the hallway arm entrances and thinking that the music from "The Legend of Zelda" would be more appropriate for this puzzling layout, I finally find one that says "Hospital Elevators." This must be it.
While riding up the elevator and staring at the floor I notice the hospital employee in the elevator with me has on my "court heels." We get into a quick convo about shoes and I ask her where Module 1 is. She tells me to follow her and I do. While I am following her, I realize that again, someone up there is laughing at me. Guess what else is on the 3rd floor? "Labor and Delivery"
Now scurrying along at a much faster pace (I am late for my appointment and trying to flee the irony of my floor assignment) I get to Module 1 after turning a few corners and going down a few hallways. I walk in and there is a sign up that says "For Check-In please use Module 2." GRRRR...
Further down the same hallway is Module 2. Kaiser Card, ID and Debit Card in hand I approach the counter again. I always forget I have a $25 copay and I always cringe when I have to pay it. I take my paperwork back up the hallway to Module 1, put my paperwork in the box by the door like they want you to and I sit and wait. I have no cell reception and the TV in the waiting room is tuned to Divorce Court. Grrrr...not today please.
A skinny middle-aged nurse with an Indian accent calls my name and I follow her around the internal maze of exam rooms to a nurse's station. She is kind but abrupt. "Put your stuff down and get on the scale." Yay, my favorite part. Today wasn't so bad because between my stomach issues and my general lack of appetite of late, I knew I had lost weight recently and this scale said the same thing the Wii Fit had told me 2 days before. She asked me how I was doing today and, not really knowing how to answer the question, I say "Could be better." She asks why and I tell her I just broke up with my boyfriend the day before. She says "You will find someone else, or the same person." Whatever. I think to myself why can't she please keep her advice to herself. I'm not here for therapy or predictions about my love life.
As she was taking my blood pressure, which was remarkably low, she asked me all of the usual questions: when was my last period, am I allergic to any medication, am I on any medication, stuff like that. But THEN she asks me if I exercise. I know where this is going and I am REALLY not in the mood today.
"Yes," I smile and say to her, hoping she will drop it. She doesn't. "How many times a week?" I grit my teeth and continue to smile as I say "Four or five." She still doesn't quit. "How long do you exercise each time?" "At least 30 minutes each time," I tell her. I add in "I weighed 30 pounds more than this a year ago and I weighed 4 pounds more than this on Friday, so it's coming down."
In my head I'm thinking "You skinny old bitch! I just told you I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday and you wanna get on my case about my weight?! F*ck you!" But I keep this to myself and just give her the eye. She takes me to an exam room and tells me to undress from the waist down and cover myself with the sheet, then leaves. I know the drill.
The exam room has an exam bench with a patch of paper on the lower half and a paper covered pillow in the upper half. Attached to the front of the bench are metal stirrups. The idea is you lay your naked butt on the edge of the exam bench, so that your butt is right on the edge, put your feet in the stirrups and put the sheet over the top of your lower body. Your bent knees under the sheet look like a little tent and you are almost flat on your back, as the pillow is too far above where your head needs to be. From this position, I can't see anything but my boobs, but that's probably a good thing. What's about to take place is something I would rather distance myself from as much as possible. No amount of meditation will take me far enough away from this to make it any less uncomfortable and intolerable. After all, I'm about to be raped by salad tongs, or at least that is what it always feels like.
My Gyno NP Alicia comes in, asks how I'm doing and after telling her about some issues I had been having with my periods she suggests that after the exam we do, get this, a pregnancy test. GRRR... just what I need right now.
I always feel like a little sissy during this part. The plastic salad tongs, called a speculum, that she uses to open me up so she can look around and take samples, always feel like they are cutting me and they are too damn wide and too damn long. She tells me to breathe through it and I am doing my best but I can barely stand it. THEN she opens them up FURTHER and I wince in pain. Breathing and "going to your happy place" won't save you now. The instruments she uses to take samples are a giant cotton swab and something that resembles a miniature toilet brush. The swab gives me the feeling of being poked by something hard, tiny and dry, hence very uncomfortable, and the brush feels like I'm being scratched on the inside, as well as poked. This adds another level of misery to the salad tong raping. She tells me I am extra-sensitive today and I wonder to myself how many women are numb to blunt objects being stuck up them.
Then she tells me to get dressed and meet her in the hallway to do the pregnancy test. By the time I get dressed, she is not outside the door anymore. The walls all look the same. I wander around and find the evil skinny nurse who hands me a urine sample cup and an alcohol prep pad. The pad MUST be so I can sanitize the cup when I close it, because there is no way that pad is going anywhere on me, especially there. No thank you.
I'm so jealous of men at this moment. More of it gets on my hand then in the cup. Now I know what the pad is for, because no amount of soap is psychologically sufficient enough when you get pee on your hands. I do my best to clean the outside of the cup after I seal it and scour the hell outta my hands with soap and hot water. I think to myself I must be a little dehydrated as I take the cup back to the evil nurse. I want to smile and say "I have a present for you" but I decide against it.
Instead of taking the cup and sending it to the lab, right there in the hallway she makes me open the cup so she can put this eyedropper thing in it and take just enough to drop it onto this little box thing. I wanna die of embarrassment and puke at the same time. This is more pee contact then I was really in the mood for. Then she tells me to go dump the rest in the toilet and throw the cup away, as if I couldn't figure that out for myself. She leaves me alone at the nurse's station with the test while it does whatever it does for 4 minutes while she gets my exit paperwork ready. I still have no cell phone reception. Four minutes is a long time, even when you know what the test is gonna say.
"Well, here is your paperwork and it looks like you aren't pregnant," the evil nurse says to me. I grab my paperwork and head for the elevators. I have cell phone reception again. I have 3 missed calls, all Sherry, who is, ironically enough, a nurse herself. I race down the hall, past Labor and Delivery to the elevators. I then power-walk past the water features and the bad piano music into the harsh light of day to my car. The nurse calls my cell phone and says she forgot to send me downstairs to pay the copay for my lab work and asks if I am still in the building. At this point I am just getting into my car, so I tell her no and ask her to bill me. I just want to get the hell outta there and call my friend and whine to her about my doctor's visit while I drive back to my Dad's.
