I RARELY GO TO THE DOCTOR. I mean, I think about going to the doctor all the time, but once I acknowledge that those voices are just my hypochondria talking, my symptoms usually disappear.
There are a lot of new and exciting symptoms to investigate and worry about when you enter middle age and the body decides to self-combust.
On a personal level, I would love to see more of my doctor because she is fabulous. I really enjoy our time together. I would like to be her real friend in the real world if she hadn’t seen my vagina and knew all about what a complete fruit loop I really am.
We are a similar age and she talks to me like a friend would. One of the few great things about being middle-aged is that the doctors become more invested in your health, especially the more it deteriorates. I suppose that we hypochondriacs become a huge gateway to doctors’ salaries now that improvements in medical science are helping us to all live longer.
But what I hadn’t appreciated before yesterday’s visit is just how similar it is to going to the mall these days – it’s one-stop shopping for all of us hypochondriac, middle-aged women. At my doctors, I can get my bloods taken, pick up my scripts, sort out contraception and get my flu jab all on the same site. I haven’t spotted the morgue yet, but it must be there somewhere.

I went in for a simple pap test yesterday and came out with a full shopping cart of flu and whooping cough jabs, a heap of blood tests and enough scripts to keep me sane for at least the next six months.
I’m fine, really.
My doctor is super-efficient. There’s none of that dancing around the problem or awkwardness when I have to open my legs to a complete stranger and pretend that I’ve still got a working pelvic floor. She’s a straight-talking speculum-in-and-out doctor with no messing around, the only slight discomfort being when she commented that I’d ‘obviously had my babies vaginally.’
I tried not to feel hurt that my vagina is obviously no longer in its first flush of youth.
The pap test included a free skin and breast check with it – a veritable three-for-one bargain – so never one to resist, I found out that the two moles I was convinced were melanomas are actually age spots –THE SHAME – and even the breast check was straightforward once she’d located them squirrelled away under my armpits.
She sold me a flu jab too. I recoiled in horror when she suggested it at first – I mean, flu jabs are for really old or really ill people aren’t they? – but at $30 a pop, it seemed like a good deal.
My blood pressure was a little high and perhaps I should have mentioned the three coffees I needed before I could place my feet in the stirrups and we agreed that coming off the fruit loop pills in the short term (as Kurt approaches his HSC/or prison), may not be the best timing.
And I left the surgery armed with a stack of reading material about other degenerating conditions I can research and worry about before my next visit.
Thanks for the morning smile! I recently had to go to see a gynecologist & after about a 5 min conversation, she said. Well let’s see your vagina. If I had had my wits about me I should have told her she could have at least bought me a drink first!
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I don’t think there’s any easy way for them to approach it. You stand there waiting for them to give you the instruction to get your knickers off and I’m sure both of you are freaking out slightly.
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Any interest in guest posting? I love this one! You’re one of the rare bloggers who can make me laugh out loud. We seem to have a similar theme going, give or take a vagina.
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Love to. Give me a chance to look through your blog and then remind me as the day job interferes. Thanks for your comments.
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P.S. Maybe reply via Facebook. We’re “friends,” you know. 🙂
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I would love to know if you read all the reading material? I don’t once I’m out that door I forget about it, lies around for a few weeks and then makes it’s way to the bin, I know it’s going to come back to haunt me. x
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No….far too scary. Then I’d just start worrying about something else. Every trip to the doctor gives me some comfort for about two weeks!
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I do love my GP too. She doesn’t have a clever device I was once given for pap smears, a little blower thinggy that gently opens the vagina, much better. But at least my doc warms her speculum up first. Ah the joys of womanhood… I’m off the happy pills for a year… umm…. not sure about it!
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The blower thing sounds interesting. It’s always nice when they warm the speculum but I was so busy chatting this time I didn’t even notice it go in. Might have been due to stretching through giving birth vaginally, though! Not brave enough to come off the happy pills yet.
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