Since I’m in the midsts of doctor visits, needles, and x-rays, my entries will probably be about that. Some of these I wrote a week or two ago and just didn’t share because…well, just because.

—

Doctors

“If doctors ever tell you that you’ve ‘flipped out,’ don’t believe them, and just keep on doing what you were doing, because something tells me ‘The Man’ is behind this.”
– Jack Handey [Deep Thoughts], Recurring Saturday Night Live comedy bit

I’ve been seeing a lot of doctors lately. I see my regular doctor for health care maintenance. When I’m feeling ill, I go into to see her and I always feel better just coming out of the office. There is a degree of comfort that I find when seeing her.

Yesterday, I went to an appointment that I had set up in July. I had to wait nearly 4 months in order to have this appointment. That’s utterly ridicules to me. Ok…that’s just my first problem with this appointment.

This appointment was for a skin cancer screening. I was scared. I know that I’m a prime candidate for skin cancer. I have strawberry blonde hair, pale skin, freckles, blue eyes, and a family history of skin cancer on both sides. I was scared.

I get there and am kept waiting for nearly an hour. I had waited 4 months and then had to wait another hour just to get into the examining room.

I spoke with the nurse longer than I spoke with the doctor. The nurse asked me my history, talked to me about my reasons for being there (I had a lesion on my hand), and told me the doctor would be in. That took maybe 5 minutes. The doctor came in, ran her hand through my hair, over my body, and said that she found three areas she’d like to biopsy.

The biopsy, as she explained it to me, would consist of freezing the area and scraping off a sample. I assumed that it would be similar to the removal of warts. It wasn’t. She actually dug into my skin and scooped out the areas.

She left and the nurse returned to dress the wounds and tell me that she’d call me within a week with the results.

That’s all that was said. There was no bedside manner because she wasn’t there long enough to have one.

I was in the office for a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes. One hour of that was waiting to go in.

I hate feeling as if I’m just a number. It’s even worse when it’s a situation that is stressful. I didn’t have the comfort that I’m used to receiving when I go to the doctor’s office. I felt let down, hurt, and violated.