Everything tastes off. My sore throat went from being vaguely hurty the past few months to being an actual genuine owie.
You’ll be happy to hear that my pap smear is over for another year. I hear your cheering. I won’t mention that my cervix was hard to find. I have a magic disappearing cervix that pops in and out of sight. Hello! I’m your cervix and now I’m over here! I can’t remember this ever being a problem before. I also won’t mention that she had to take out, insert and crrrrrank open the speculum FOUR times to find it. I mean, why mention that? It might make you uncomfortable.
Beyond the pap, my physical included a tippytap on the cleavage side of each breasts not lasting longer the .4 seconds, a visual peering moment at my neck and the question ‘Are you regular?’ I asked her ‘Do you mean pooping?’ No reflexes. No breathing deep. No looking for swelling around my ankles. No groping to find lumps in my breasts. Not even a tickle. No looking in my throat or actually, you know, touching it. Or in my ears. No asking how I feel. Because she knows. She read my lab results so she already knows that I’m fine. Even if I’m not, she knows I am. I’ve decided she must have super powers. She can see inside my body with her ultrasonic vision and hear my heart with her supersonic hearing. When I asked ‘So, that’s it? That’s the physical?’ She laughed and did a soft-shoe out the exam room door. Ya-cha-cha-cha-cha.
From her complete and thorough looking at my neck, she decided I no longer needed an ultrasound on my thyroid. I mean, she totally looked at it for like 2 seconds. With her eyes because you look with your eyes, stupid, not your hands. I asked her if I could get one anyway, since I actually used my fingers to touch my neck and it has been sore for so long and she said, ‘No. You don’t need one. Last week’s blood tests showed you are back within range. You’re good.’
Well, thanks! Awesome! I’m .2 within the top part of the range and so I’m good. I then told her I’d like a referral to an endocrinologist to which she frowned and looked doubtful. I did my best, listing off all my siblings and my extended family history in an effort to help her understand that I REALLY WANT TO GO TO SOMEONE ELSE. She nodded, pretended to listen, jotted down ‘family history thyroid’ on my chart, um-hummed a few times, checked her watch and said, ‘I’ll request it and see if you qualify for one. Don’t get your hopes up.’
She’s my favorite. With or without her referral, I’m going to someone else. It’s just that ‘with’ we still get to eat food. Not being able to afford food – not so fun.
Screw republican, democrat, independent, black, white, female, male or vegetable. I’m voting for the person with the strongest medical reform in their platform.
Wow, you really know how to celebrate Valentine’s Day!
No joking about the doctor though. It can be worse when you have two or three different specialists, they toss the ball in each other’s court. None willing to DO what they’re supposed to. Damn bad doctors! Hope you find a better one.
Leah! My cervix is ‘hard to find’ too! I had necer heard of that and thought it was just me! We must be twins. Is your uterus tilted too? Maybe that’s it.
Amen sister- I want Universal Health Care!
you need a new doc. Just about any one. I have enough medical training to know that. Yikes! I’ve had better service in the e.r.
Seriously, call your insurer and see if they can help you find a new doc. One with a brain, and a little sensitivity training.
um, you have to totally tell on her to her boss. hee.
seriously, write a letter to the people who need to know (i don’t know who they are). if she is treating you this way, think of all the other people that will have to endure her wrath.
Because sharing too much information is awesome 🙂 My very first pap ever was performed by Agnes and Myrtle, these ancient public health nurses who, after the most uncomfortable 20 minutes of my life, informed me that my cervix was “playing hide and seek” with them, and called in a third nurse to find it. Cheers to magic disappearing cervixes!
And since we’re on the subject of funny pap stories and quality physician care, here’s one for a giggle:
During my last exam my doctor says to me “Are you ok? You seem kind of tense.”
So I said “Well, this isn’t exacly the most fun way to spend a Wednesday morning…”
And she peers up over the sheet, sort of raises her eyebrows and says “You’re telling me!”
I want to punch her. Dude. She can’t tell shit from feeling your thyroid oh my God, and RANGE OH MY GOD DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE RANGE. (It will not surprise you that I don’t feel good until I’m within the range of 0-1 of TSH)
Thinking of you. I’m glad you’re going somewhere else.
Wow, they really make doctors like that, in real life? I thought that was all in a fiction writer’s head.
I’m going to send my doctor a Valentine. I think I love him.
universal health care? what are you all a bunch of commies? Seriously, Dubya has a great plan for us… you know, where you spend like a couple hundred a month for high deductible health plan, but wait, the good part is you can have a Health Savings Plan and put your pretax wages in there…. then, you can shop around for the best deal in health care. That’s the american way. Supply and demand, free market economy and all that. I mean seriously, you want the best deal, right, not the best… especially when it comes to health care. right?
During my first ever pap smear, my doctor told me that I had a “shy cervix”, and she said that it’s fairly common, but until now, I was the only one I knew of.
She’s awful. If you don’t mind driving to Thousand Oaks, I have a good OBGYN and a good GP. I just noticed today that there are also internists and a cardiologist in the same practice.
First I swore off all male GYNs because they were paternalistic, insensitive, & ignorant of all things female except for book learning. For a time, it was, as the Bible says, good. I went to sensitive women who knew what it was like to be in the stirrups. Smart women who had a strong sense of what can only be called ‘sisterhood.’ Then I started finding female GYNs who had introjected the entire paternalistic, insensitive male schtick. Only they were worse than the male GYNs because they came masquerading in skirts. Now I’m thinking it’s best to go to a young male GYN who was raised by a 60s feminist.
Right on, sister.
I’m sorry you are having such bad luck with doctors. Is there some kind of shortage of doctors in your area? Why is there such a plethora of bad doctors?
Good luck on your search for better medical care–it’s out there but can be hard to find.
“I also won’t mention that she had to take out, insert and crrrrrank open the speculum FOUR times to find it. I mean, why mention that? It might make you uncomfortable.”
and, just now, when i read that, these things all happened simultaneously:
-lean forward in computer chair
-squeeze thighs together
-make orgasm face except wrinkly your forehead and eyes as best you can because you are not envisioning anything having to do with pleasure.
OH YUCK. i guess i know how guys feel when another guy gets hit in the nads.
I recently asked my doctor—in the examination room, with just the two of us and a medical intern, and with the door closed—for a referral to a psychologist and when he responded, he whispered the word psychologist. WTF?
And after all that, he sent me to to front desk to get the information from one of the receptionists and she proceeded to completely cancel out his hyper-discretionary behavior.
I never got a referral.
Oh. God. The. Speculum.
Eons ago when I HAD insurance, my insurance company decided all pap smears should be done by the family doctor instead of a ob/gyn. I had a family doctor who was pretty sure he could gain weight just by getting within 2 feet of me. Yes, he was a sensitive soul that one.
So it was with sheer delight I looked forward to baring my nether regions to him. He fiddle farts around for about 5 minutes, and announces he can’t find my cervix (as if it’s my fault and I forgot to mention it fell out two weeks ago.)
I said, “If you will remove that tire jack from my hoohoo, I will point you in the right direction.” Dr. Incompetent finally swabbed something, God knows if it was my cervix, and allowed me to get dressed. I know this will come as a shock, but I found a new doctor after that.
Good luck! There ARE good doctors out there, but it does appear they are getting harder to find. Amen to Universal Healthcare, unless of course we are required to go to these doctors who rode the short bus to medical school.