I had an annual ‘Health Review’ today. I’m not a fan. I’m not sure why – there is nothing truly horrible about them but somehow I feel the same way about Health Reviews that I feel about any other sort of review. Like the ‘Let’s review what you should have done under the circumstances’ or the ‘Let’s review why this didn’t work’ or ‘Let’s review your underwhelming performance at lawn mowing’*.
No one wants to give you a review if you’ve been great at something. No one ever said, ‘Let’s review how you won that Gold Medal at the Olympics’ or ‘Let’s review how you delivered that baby in the back seat of your taxi’. They don’t review that at all! They give you a medal or an award or name a street after you.
At my age, a Health Review begins before I ever make it to my Doctor’s Examining Table. They send me to be drained of blood, to pee in a small jug and this year a new kind of fuckery called a Stool Sample. And, to make it as inconvenient as possible, you have to go to the Lab to get the kit to get your stool sample so you can bring it back to them when you arrive for the other tests. And if you don’t want to sit in the waiting room for 23 hours you have to make an appointment, so you only have to wait 12 hours in the waiting room.
This year they made me recite my full name and birth date before they would drain my blood. I asked if this was a trick or something? What if I get the answers wrong? Will you not drain my blood and accept my warm jug of urine? Apparently, it helps them make sure my body fluids aren’t confused with anyone else’s body fluids but what if that other person’s body fluids pass more reviews? That would be to my advantage, wouldn’t it?
The Blood Drainer wasn’t amused. She took all my blood and told me my Doctor (Janna) would be ‘in touch’, but that was a complete fabrication because my Doctor never calls me. The admirable Natalie, of Front Desk Fame, calls me and tells me when to present myself at the clinic a week or two hence. I didn’t bother to explain this to The Drainer though because I may have already annoyed her.
As it turned out Natalie called me the following day to say Janna wanted to see me. Stat. Thank Gawd I didn’t annoy The Drainer as much as I could have because Natalie sent me for more drainage.
Long story short….Janna started throwing around words like ‘Sugar’ and ‘Diabetes’. She sent me to see another Doctor (Buki) who sent me for more drainage. Now I have two Doctors who will, in all likelihood, give me more ‘reviews’. And Janna demanded my presence today for the regular Health Review that I’ve been dodging for 3 years, because I am more than just my Back and my Diabetes. Apparently.
After the preliminaries of weight and height, she reviewed my tests, said my blood pressure and cholesterol were great, my heart was a machine and my lungs were stellar.
Me: Yes, but what about my stool sample? Did they find anything really interesting in it? Like a tooth or a gold nugget?
Her: No, but if there had been any gold in it the Lab Technician would have kept it.
Me: That’s probably what happened – that Technician looked shifty to me.
Once I was on the table, she went straight to work in the murky depths beneath the sheet. She’s chatting away about vacations and stuff, but suddenly stops and says….
“Huh. Your vagina goes to the right and it’s tipped back. That’s a bit challenging.”
I’m not sure what I should have said to this. Several ideas popped into mind:
- Maybe it’s Strategic Evasion Maneuvers. I almost fell this morning, maybe it was my vagina making a hard right turn.
- Maybe it’s shy. It’s not like it gets out to socialize very often. It’s more like an introvert really. Or….
- Maybe it’s just a willful and contrary orifice determined to get a bad review.
Whatever the case, after a moment of rummaging she said, “Oh! There it is!”
When I told The Viking about my vagina, he didn’t seem surprised at all. He must have known it all along but deliberately kept that fact to himself. Next time I have a Health Review, I’ll be asking him the state of my vagina so I don’t have any more surprises. He’s more familiar with it than I am, after all.
So. To review: My heart, lungs, blood pressure and cholesterol are fantastic, but I don’t get an award. My pancreas got a terrible review and is now a subject of ridicule and Organ Bullying. And my Mammogram gave the boobs an A+.
Still no award though.
*I deliberately mowed the lawn terribly because my Mom said, “Don’t do any chore for your husband unless you want to do it forever”. So, when Stanley asked me to mow the lawn I mowed the lawn….kind of like a crop circle before crop circles became popular. Now that I think about it though, I should have received some sort of award or recognition for the idea of crop circles because it would have countered the resulting ‘review’ of my lawn mowing skills.