I’ve never minded dentists, but gynecologists are a different story.
My first gynecologist was found in a hurry after college, when I happened to read a magazine article that said women were supposed to start seeing gynecologists after age 18 (Jane’s mind: “Yipes, I’m four years late! WILL I DIE?”).
Smart, patient, and funny, she took my concerns seriously and told me what she was going to do before she did it. When she moved to a different practice forty miles away in South Weymouth, I was devastated. I’d only seen her maybe three times, but I knew she was going to be hard to replace.
And she was.
The next gynecologist I tried was on the North Shore, after we moved to Salem. Other than an embarrassing misunderstanding involving an ultrasound and vast amounts of water being drunk too late, our relationship was largely punctuated by her lack of interest in me. She was one of the few doctors I’d met who was actually more excited and happy when I came down with strange symptoms and illnesses. I was glad she liked me, but I wasn’t thrilled that she became disappointed when I started getting better.
When we moved to Woburn, I switched to a brisk, efficient woman who appeared greatly in demand. An annual appointment with her meant calling on the first Wednesday of the month, three months before I wanted to see her. This was when the hospital opened up their scheduling calendar, and if I didn’t call that day, I could forget about seeing her that quarter.
We moved again a few years later, and after looking up my busy gynecologist on Docboard and finding out that she had paid to settle a malpractice suit in the past, I decided I might as well get a new one that was closer.
I selected my new gynecologist very carefully: she was the only one within fifteen miles with whom I could get an appointment before our medical reimbursement period ran out.
I arrived punctually at 9 AM on the day of my appointment. That early in the day, I figured there would be little to no chance of the doctor running late already. After checking in, I went into the waiting room.
As an experienced waiter, I knew at a glance that this waiting room was subpar. There was no obvious bathroom nearby, no water cooler, and worst of all, no good magazines. The magazine selection consisted primarily of baby, parenting and motherhood magazines; I didn’t fit into any of those categories. I picked a British gossip magazine entitled “Hello!” and settled down with it.
By the time I finished the magazine (dated February of this year, when the big news over there was that the last season of Friends was just starting), I was starting to wonder where my doctor was. I changed seats and had just begun to read a US Weekly that was older than most of my dogs when a nurse finally called my name and brought me into an exam room.
“Please stand on the scale,” she directed me.
I stood. She measured.
I hopped off the scale and she said, “How tall are you?”
“About five foot four,” I said. At least, that was the height I wanted to be. I wondered why nurses always trusted patients to say the truth about their height, but not their weight. After all, the height affected whether the weight was in the appropriate range. Maybe I should have answered five foot nine, just to see if she’d notice I was a short five foot nine.
She took my blood pressure and then told me the doctor would come in for me, and would probably take me into her office for a short talk as this was my first visit.
I was bored waiting for the doctor, so I wandered around the exam room. A poster of Prenatal Supports was on the wall, and I leaned in closely to look at the picture of the Natural Embrace. Why, that was perfect to carry a small chihuahua in!!
The doctor came in shortly afterward, and after she introduced herself, I followed her into her office where she rapidly ran through my answers on the new patient questionnaire. She then brought me back to the exam room. “Put the johnny on with the opening in front, and the sheet in your lap, and I’ll be back,” she said.
After she had closed the door, I took off my clothes, wondering, as always, whether or not I was supposed to take off my socks. Why should I? I mean, no one was going to be examining my feet. But it seemed weird to leave them on, too, and I was pretty sure most people took them off. Rebelliously, I decided to go against peer pressure, and left my socks on.
I slung the johnny around me, and studied the strings. Was there anyone who knew how to tie these? I settled for knotting them loosely across the top and waist.
I sat on the exam table and spread out the paper sheet in my lap. As far as I could figure out, the paper sheet was solely to protect women from seeing their own nether regions as the doctor examined them. This seemed pretty stupid to me, because I certainly didn’t shower in a swimsuit to protect my eyes from myself, but the paper sheet manufacturers were probably pleased with themselves.
The doctor knocked on the door, and after I said, “Come in,” she entered.
She deftly untied my johnny at the top and began the breast exam. Unlike other doctors and previous episodes of ER, this breast exam was barely noticeable. If I concentrated very hard, I could almost feel what seemed to be the wind lightly passing over my chest.
“So you’re thinking about having kids?” she asked.
“Well, I’m not sure,” I said. “They’re a lot of work.”
“Lie down,” she said. I did. She ran her hand over my chest again and then asked me to sit up and move to the bottom of the exam table.
I slid down and she draped the sheet carefully over me and adjusted the light by her chair.
“I mean, I don’t have much time left,” I continued. “Isn’t the best age to have a child around 35?”
“Well, yes,” she said. “Fertility starts to go down after 35.”
“But does the baby have to be born by 35, or just conceived by–” Hello! What was going on down there? I guess the Pap smear had started.
She continued jabbing me with various implements.
“Just conceived by 35,” she said, as though nothing had happened. Some advance warning would have been nice for me, though.
She yanked out the speculum — owwww!!! — and scooted her stool backwards. She grabbed a tube of lubricant, and the next thing I knew, her finger was in my vagina. My goodness. And I barely knew her.
Even my last gynecologist, the one with the various malpractice payments, had told me what she was going to do before she did it, and if she didn’t, her assistant was right there explaining things.
At age 30, I didn’t need someone to hold my hand through this, but I was a bit alarmed at the rapidity of the whole exam. It had taken me forty-five minutes of waiting to see the doctor, and now she was sending me away in fifteen. Surely any potential breast lumps would require more time and pressure to discover?
After I got dressed, I made my copayment and staggered out to the car. I did value efficiency but in this case, a little less would have kept me from mapquesting South Weymouth as soon as I got home. Forty-one minutes to my first gynecologist’s office? That sounded just inefficient enough to make me happy.
Pedro has been dead three years today, which is longer than he was alive. I still miss him.
We went to The Magnetic Fields concert last night. Poor Chris had to deal with the agony of sitting through two bands he hated, but he did it because he loves me.
I got a small taste of what he was feeling when the opening act played. He had a great singing voice but he was too performance arty for me. I felt that hell must be a little like what we were listening to, only without the benefit of having cough drops to suck on during the show.
It’s strange how much time changes. The last time I saw The Magnetic Fields was in a smoky, crowded tiny club. The band was fantastic back then. Last night’s show was in a huge, seated indoor area with people from 16 to 60 in the audience, and The Magnetic Fields, I am sorry to say, needed more practice.
Some of the singing was out of tune, and the cellist kept flubbing notes. I still love them, but I wanted to take them home and make them practice. They were much more laid-back and funny this time around, though. They seemed to enjoy themselves more on stage.
But my theory is that even if your primary day job isn’t music-related any more, you need to be in tune while you’re performing at venues that add $7 in “convenience” charges to each ticket.
The small slip of paper in front of me was succinct and immediately appealing.
“Redeem your unused miles for magazines,” it trumpeted. “No cash cost to you!”
Reading material for free. What could be better than that? I had no loyalties to any one airline, especially after I’d read about Midwest Airlines, with its wonderful meals and excellent customer service, and urged Chris to buy a few shares in it. The shares only went down (and this was before 9/11), and the wonderful free meals were later discontinued and offered for individual purchase only.
So I had no regrets about giving up my frequent flier miles for free magazines. True, the list of magazines in the program didn’t include Chris’s favorite, Foreign Affairs, which cost an expensive $6 per issue, nor People Magazine or Entertainment Weekly (both of which I liked reading, but not if it involved my own money).
“I wish I could just get five years of Time Magazine instead,” I sighed. Then I glanced at the small print on the paper. A phone number was listed at the bottom. I dialed the number and listened to a recording that instructed me that should I want multiple terms of a magazine, I could select them by simply writing the number of years up to 3, then a X, and then the magazine code.
Yippee! After much calculation and jiggling of my available miles, I came up with a combination I thought was perfect. One year of Wired for Chris. One year of something called Cargo Magazine, which sounded like a shopping guide for guys, for Chris. Two years of Newsweek for me, and three years of Time. I sent in the form.
A few months later, I finally received my first issues of Time and Newsweek. Immediately I noticed that the expiration dates on the label were for 2005–yes, that meant they only gave me one year for each magazine.
Online, I looked up my accounts. Time Magazine informed me that my subscription had been placed through NewSub Subscription Services, so I called them.
The machine asked me if I wanted to order a new subscription (”please say yes or no”). I said no.
“Do you want to report a missing issue?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you want to check your billing history?”
“NO,” I said, more impatiently.
“Please enter the credit card number you used for faster service,” the machine instructed me.
That put me in a jam, because I hadn’t used a credit card. After all, that was what “free” meant.
With nothing to say, I waited out the machine until it sent me back to another menu.
“Do you want to cancel your subscription?” it inquired.
I bellowed, “NO!” and evidently the machine was not built for bellowing because it said politely, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Please hold for the next available customer representative.”
Eventually a customer service rep, whose grasp on English was tenuous indeed, came on the line. She professed no knowledge of the multiple terms issue, once she understood my question, which occurred only after I substituted “years” for “terms.”
If I understood her correctly, her company did indeed fulfill subscriptions for airlines, but I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was talking about. I hung up with her and went back online.
Surfing the airline site, I found information about exchanging miles for magazines. They had a different phone number listed for the subscription agency, so I dialled it.
Other than an initial greeting that announced the airline’s name, I went through about five of the same questions recited by the same uncaring machine that I had gone through with the other phone number. I wondered if I had merely reached another division of the same company.
Then the questions began to diverge. Instead of asking for my credit card number, it wanted to know my name.
“Please say your last name now. Do not spell it now,” the machine advised me.
I said my last name.
“Thank you. Now, speaking normally, please spell your last name. For instance, you could say O C O N N O R.”
I spelled my last name.
The racist machine said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. Please hold for the next available representative.”
The next available representative appeared to know English this time, but said that the computer wouldn’t let her enter multiple years of Time and Newsweek.
“It’s only letting me give you double issues, so that you’d receive two of the same issue each week. Or you could just sign up for a new subscription next year,” she said.
“Well, I was just worried about my miles expiring before then.”
“Here’s the airline phone number–you can call and check with them.”
I called the airline. I got another recorded woman, with the mechanical voice I’d grown to hate. But this time I made the lucky mistake of coughing while she was still reading the introduction. Immediately, there was silence. After a minute, the recording said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you want to …”
I ignored the rest of what she said because I was coughing again. The voice cut off, and then said, “I can’t understand you. Please hold for a customer representative.”
If only I had known earlier that coughing would be the key to jumping straight to real people!
A woman came on the line. I wondered briefly why no men seemed to work for these places, and I asked her about the Magazine for Miles program.
“Oh, we send those out all the time,” she said. I heard a note of surprise in her voice. Apparently not many people called them to ask for more telemarketing materials to be mailed to them.
I asked her for my frequent flier member number, and she asked for my last name and zip code. I gave her the zip code of our current home, figuring that since their last promotion got to this house, they must have this address.
Apparently not, because she said, “That zip code doesn’t match what we have. Could it be under another zip code?” She had that tone of voice that told me I had to guess the right one before she would release my membership number.
“We’ve lived in three houses in the last five years,” I mumbled, almost to myself. “So there’s 01801…”
She didn’t say anything.
“Or 01970,” I continued, not even sure if I was remembering that zip code right. Then I reached way back in time and also gave her the zip code of my parents’ home, where I haven’t lived for about six or seven years.
01970 was the winner, and she gave me my membership number. “I should update your address as well,” she added, unnecessarily.
I hung up the phone and felt I’d accomplished something. Maybe I didn’t get the extra years on the magazines that I wanted, but next year I could just go online and subscribe to something else. Hey, if I had to, I was willing to subscribe to Seventeen just to make the airline pay for a magazine. I figured they owed me something for my time with the mechanical woman.