Someone just stuck a needle in me, and didn't even have the courtesy to put a barbell in the hole afterwards. I'm going to say that I'm sulking about that, to cover up the fact that I'm actually sulking over the lab technician's totally unsympathetic attitude. I walked into the steal-your-blood-from-you room after 20 minutes of freaking myself out very quietly in the think-about-needles-for-20-minutes room, and was told rather brusquely to have a seat. "Er," I stammered, "I tend to pass out when I get, um, needled... so, um, if I could lay down, that would be good?" She sighed and cleared some stuff off the examination table. "Well, go on, lay down." I lay down and squeezed my eyes shut and winced out the window at the people driving happily down Telegraph Avenue with all their blood still in their bodies, and I didn't make even one little whimpery noise. The technician just went right ahead and stole my life force as if it were some trifling procedure that thousands of people take in stride every day. I was so disheartened that I didn't even stand up for my right to get a "no tears today" sticker for being so good.
I'm beginning to question my brilliant plan to use a mostly-pediatric medical office as my primary doctor. I went in expecting lollipops and the bit where they poke you in the stomach and try to guess what you had for breakfast, and all I got was an attractive woman of my own generation groping my breasts and sending me across the hall to get blood drawn for STD testing. It's not that I object to getting 23-year-old-appropriate medical care, you see. It's not that I particularly want to be 11 again. It's just that, dammit, I was really good about everything and nobody cared. I would have been proud of that "no tears" sticker. I would have stuck it right on my shirt and walked home with the cotton ball taped to my arm and the sticker showing and everyone would have known that it was scary and I was brave.
Maybe I'll pick up my paycheck and use it to stuff myself full of lotus buns in Chinatown as a reward to myself. Mmmm. Lotus.
Posted by dianna at October 15, 2004 12:18 PMhey if you come to my house tomorrow i will give you some stickers.
Posted by: didofoot at October 15, 2004 01:02 PMWhat cream cheese question? Agh! I didn't get any cream cheese question!
Posted by: Dianna at October 15, 2004 04:50 PM"all I got was an attractive woman of my own generation groping my breasts"
the distinct lack of stickers and lollipops aside, this sounds like a pretty good appointment to me. rrrowwr.
Posted by: katie at October 16, 2004 09:53 AMI'll be sure to tell my doctor that, next time I go in. "So, Dianna, do you have any other concerns?" "Rrrrowr!"
Katie, do you remember having Dr. Heiferman play the breakfast guessing game with us? Am I seeing our pediatric doctor's visits through rose-colored nostalgia glasses or did she actually get it right pretty often?
Posted by: Dianna at October 16, 2004 12:37 PMi actually have no memory whatsoever of the breakfast guessing game. i do remember, however, that you submitted a poem to highlights magazine which immortalized the pediatrician's-office experience. it was entitled "i'm sitting naked in a paper dress," and the first lines went as follows:
i'm sitting naked in a paper dress.
the reason why you'll never guess,
but i'm sitting naked in a paper dress.
they did not, as i recall, print it, perhaps because when taken out of the doctor's-office context it read as a teeny bit risque.
Posted by: katie at October 16, 2004 05:01 PM