GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

I got that wonderful reminder card in the mail a few weeks back.  Not for my six month dental checkup (I actually am overdue for that).  Oh no, I got that yearly ob gyn checkup postcard.  Ugh!  Since I have moved a great deal in my life, I have had a splattering of gynecologists.  Some have been great.  Others, not so much.  Two in particular come to mind in the horrible bedside manner category.  The first ob gyn doctor I ever had was when I got married at age 18.  He was our family physician who delivered me and a good share of the kids in my hometown.  He and his wife also went to the church I grew up in.  All that is fine until you cross the threshold to womanhood.  Then well, it's just awkward.  He was a great man who also delivered my daughter.  I still see him from time to time and he usually gets a bit teary eyed when he sees me - the circle of life stuff I think hits him.   That day at age 18 sitting in his office a month or so before my wedding we are discussing sex and birth control (out of body experience at that age and phase of life). In a very matter of fact manner he looks at me and says, "No matter how good you feel after sex, get up and go to the bathroom.  If you don't, you can end up with a urinary tract infection."  There was no build up to it.  Nope.  No segway.  Just those words and he moved on.  I felt as if I had been told that the canned mushrooms could be found in aisle 7.   Fast forward a few years and another move.  I am sitting in a new gynecologists office.  He is a man (That is an interesting and somewhat disturbing career choice.  I'll bet there are far more male gynecologists than there are female urologists.  Just a hunch!).  He really is quite personable.  Too much in fact.  His mode of examination when perched between my stirrup stretched legs was to talk.  And talk incessantly down there he did.  At one point I wanted to say, "Please, just do your job quietly and get the hell out!"  It was a kind of out of body experience.  I wondered laying there what sex was like for his wife.  Had it become just a monologue from him?  After yet another move at some point I had several great doctors.  He laid the ground work for me to never ever have a male gynecologist again.  One female doctor in particular was spectacular.  We hit it off in every possible way and developed a friendship.  She had the ability to empathize, find humor in the process and listen.  Great qualities in a doctor or really a human being in general.  She unexpectedly moved from the area leaving me without a doctor.  The clinic placed me with the new doctor that took her place.  During that period of time I was ill and my weight was low and most systems in my body were not firing on all cylinders - including estrogen.  I suppose not having been with me through my physical journey she was lacking eyes that had seen.  She was also missing ears that listened and a heart that cared.  I never went back again and called the business office to file a complaint against her.  I wasn't the only one who had done that either.  As I called the number on my reminder card this week to schedule my yearly exam, I was asked which doctor in the conglomerate I saw.  I couldn't remember her name only her character.  I replied, "The funny woman who makes putting your legs in stirrups for a pap smear and an ovary check less horrible than others!"  They knew exactly who I meant - Dr. McBride.