You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The annual physical.
It’s a turn your head and cough invasion of personal space.
It’s poking and prodding and pushing in directions that don’t feel good. It’s personal questions about what goes in, what comes out, how many times a night do you get up to do what?
The minute you walk in the office this medical melee begins.
Has your insurance changed? Any health changes we should know about? Are you still an organ donor, just in case?
They call your name and the processional of professional prodding begins.
“Get on the scale please.”
Hmmm? the nurse eyes the mechanisms suspiciously.
She keeps tapping the weights to the right. Her eyes widen. Her facial expression stays hard and cold like the female warden of a death camp for women.
“Hey can’t i take off my shoes?”
No smile. No laughter.
“This way please”
She opens up the door to a cold exam room.
“Up on the table please”
My butt crinkles the wax paper dangling off the side. She grabs the blood pressure monitor wrapping it around my bicep.
squish squish squish
It grows tight like an air filled octopus. I can hear my heart beat in my ears. Its so tight my tongue hurts for a moment.
She jots something down on a chart.
“Any problems?” she asks.
I laugh and shake my head. I still can’t pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time,” I chirp.
Crickets.
“The doctor will be right with you,” she says closing the door, returning to her duties at the women’s prison.
“Doctor will be right with me?,” I say under my breath. “Yeah right.”
I jump off the table and sit in the chair. Might as well get comfortable. Doctors expect you to be on time, even early. They have no time table for seeing you. 10am? That’s a suggestion in case the police are issued a missing person’s report later in the day.
I read an entire article in Sports Illustrated. I checked my email. I end up listening to the doctor examine a patient in the next room.
The walls are paper thin and I can hear almost everything.
“Momma, remember your feet was swelling,” I hear a woman say so loud, i feel like a peeping tom with ears. “Momma tell the doctor about your swelling feet.”
I try and plug my ears with my thoughts. I don’t want to hear about granny’s feet.
I feel like calling the front desk and asking if they are open.
After 45 minutes I hear the the papers shuffel in the box by the door. That’s when the doctor walks in. I have almost forgotten why I am here.
Why am I here? Oh yes, my annual physical.
My doctor is a nice man and has been my physician for ages.
“You haven’t been here in 2 years,” he says staring at his lap top.
“My health care plan doesn’t promote positive health care doc,” I say with a smile.
He doesn’t look up.
“When you get to your age, I recommend going to home depot and getting some duct tape and gorilla glue to hold it all together.”
Is this a joke?
He looks up from his lap top with a smirk.
ha ha
Then he begins a powerful probe that only an extraterrestrial could appreciate.
He sticks the light in my ear. He twists it pushing it deep into my ear canal.
“What are you looking for, my esophagus?” I say wincing.
“Hold still.”
He sticks the light in my throat.
Say Aaah.
“Aaahhhh”
It’s so cliche. Does this really do anything or did he see this in a Bug’s Bunny cartoon?
He bangs my elbow, he bangs my knee. It moves. Why is that? I wonder.
No time…
He listens to my chest and my back.
Take a deep breath he says. Suddenly I am breathing like a crank caller.
Then it gets serious.
“OK drop your pants.”
You can only say this in a doctor’s office and not file an HR complaint.
I feel awkward as I reach for my belt.
He dons the elastic gloves.
Snap.
“turn your head and cough”
I cough. He squeezes.
“Looking for lumps,” he says.
“I think you found one,” I reply uneasily.
“OK bend over the table,” he says while squirting some liquid gel onto his fingers.
“really? we gotta do this too?” I lament.
“I don’t like it any more than you,” he says.
I am not so sure. I feel like a convict about to drop the soap.
“OK this is gonna be a little uncomfortable,” he says with all the concern of a mortician adjusting the eye brows on a lawn mower victim in a casket.
Aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! I scream.
I wonder what the old lady with the bad feet in the next room thinks about that.
I try and imagine something nice like clouds and unicorns. All I see is hob-gobblins throwing flaming lawn darts at my ass.
After 30 miserable seconds it’s over.
I can feel my heart beating in my prostate. It’s 2013 and this is the only way we can do this? It’s so barbaric. You don’t shove your arm down my throat to look at my spleen? Can’t medical science figure out a way to check a guy’s prostate without violating his code of cool?
“Sit down” he says
“No thanks” I wince. “I think I’ll stand.”
I find myself trying to walk off the exam like a baseball player hit by a pitch. I am suddenly doing circles around his tiny exam office.
“OK. I want you to think about a colonoscopy, a chest x ray and a ekg,” he says.
what???
This is like the executioner asking you to bring your own rope to the gallows. Hasn’t this been invasive enough?
Apparently not.
The nurse hands me a cup and points at the restroom.
Everyone watches me as I sneak into the bathroom with my little plastic cup with my name written in big black letters.
How humiliating.
I put the warm cup in a little box next to another person’s warm cup. It’s a woman’s name. I wonder about her for a moment. How did she fill her cup I wonder? Is it harder for girls? What if they mix up our cups? What if the lids aren’t screwed on tightly and they spill in the back on the attendant.
Enough….
Is this what we have been reduced to I think? A warm plastic cup, a name and a number, shoved in a locker mounted over the toilet?
Gross!
I go to another room where a young nurse ties a rubber band around my bicep.
She is cute, but this is no time to fantasize about sexy nurses. She begins banging my veins like my skin is a bongo.
“You got little veins” she says.
I don’t know whether to be insulted or not.
“Little veins? Is that bad?”
“Harder to get the tip in, she says. Vein rolls around. Tricky.”
Huh? Veins rolling around? What is this, a blood letting or a carnival cruise ship of anatomy?
I don’t like this part. I hate needles. I hate blood. I don’t like this at all. I’m not scared, but then again, I’m not feeling brave.
If this was a Marvel Comic, I would be Woosy Man.
“Let’s try the other arm,” she says.
She hands me a rubber ball and says “squeeze this.” Like I have bigger veins on one half of my body?
She keeps tapping my arm.
I feel like a heroine junkie.
She puts the alcohol on the arm and says “this will stick a little.”
ouch!
It sticks a lot. The pressure on my little vein is immense. Is it rolling, I wonder. Sure feels like it’s rolling. Rolling right off a cliff into a hot garbage heap of hurry up!
She starts talking about her weekend at the pool, like I don’t have a 10 foot long needle hanging out of my arm.
“So many kids in the children’s pool splashing me,” she says.
I have my eyes closed. I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. A gallon of my blood being extracted from my body.
I am trying to imagine her in a bikini, sultry, wet, walking in slow motion. All I see are tiny pygmies with blow darts full of poison.
“almost done?” I say.
My goal is not to cry. Woosy Man never cries.
She fills up a second beaker of blood.
I wonder how much more blood I can spare. I wonder if there are vampires in the 37069 zip code getting aroused.
How much more blood do you need? This stuff doesn’t grow on trees i think to myself.
She pulls the needle out of my vein.
I swear I hear a vacuum sound. It feels like an apple popping out of a garden hose.
yowie
She ties my arm off in a blue gauze bandage like I’m a 7 year old kid.
“Good to go,” she says.
I stand up woozy.
I’ve been pricked and prodded and poked and talked to like a 7 year old.
My front my back and my insides have all been fondled like fruit at Middle Eastern market.
I leave the building feeling like I need to fill out a crime report.
And i’m paying for this?
With my insurance? Yes I am paying for this!
life’s crazy™