Department Of Gut Reactions
Dateline: Sunday 2 PM-ish. MH and I are finishing our very yummers lunch at the Big Wave Café in Manzanita. MH looks out the window of our booth, toward the cannabis dispensary which is fifty feet south of the cafe. He reads me the dispensary’s street advertising signs, which proclaim,
Organic Herb
Taste The Difference.
Moiself:
” ‘Cause you don’t wanna ingest any pesticides when you’re smoking that shit.”
Your paranoia will be much more eco-friendly.
* * *
Department Of I’m Not Mean…But I Do Mean Business
What sparked the following story/memory? That’s a good question (which y’all didn’t ask, but moiself did). It might have been the snippets of conversation I heard while having lunch at a local sushi bar, where one person asked antheir friend to describe some “bad” thing they’ve done, that they didn’t think was bad at the time and iit wasn’t anything horrible but in retrospect it might have been a bit over the top…. [1]
Dateline: late 1980s, one weekday morning, at work, which is just a hop, skip, a jump and two labor contractions away from Stanford Hospital. [2] Moiself is in my second year as medical assistant/reproductive health care educator for the OB-GYN practice of Dr. DWB and Nurse Practitioner POM.
I fetch an amniocentesis kit from the supply closet, place it in the ultrasound room, and continue down the hallway, past the other exam rooms and Dr. B’s office. As I reach the counter of the staff’s work desk I can see, through the window behind the check-in desk, a patient in the waiting room, standing at the window. The patient introduces herself to JJ, the practice’s accountant, who is doing the day’s appointment check-ins.
Oh please, not her….
I immediately cringe at my silent, kneejerk groan of judgementalism – as well as my surprised reaction. After all, *I* was the one responsible for getting everything ready for the day’s schedule of patients, which means that on the previous afternoon I’d seen the name, pulled the chart, noted the appointment parameters, and thus, theoretically, knew that “TP” was coming in for her annual exam. But it wasn’t until I saw TP’s face that I remembered who she was, from her appointment a year ago.
I’d been warned about this patient from the office manager, who’d been with the practice several years before moiself. There are patients you’d love to see more frequently, and there are…others. TP, with her imperious bearing and overt sense of entitlement, definitely fit into the *others* category. [3] We had frequent dealings with pompous assholery (this was Palo Alto, after all) – that wasn’t the issue. The warning I’d received concerned the fact that TP brought her daughter to her exams, despite having been nicely but firmly instructed to please *not* do so after the first time she’d brought her then three-year-old to mommy’s pap smear appointment.
I recalled the previous year, when TP’s child, whom moiself shall refer to as Pico (as in, Pico Monsteri [4] ) was around six years old. Upon checking her in for her appointment, I’d noticed that TP had brought Pico, and no one else was with her to watch Pico. I knew TP’s background; she had friends and family living nearby and she and her husband were filthy rich would have had no problem affording a sitter. When I started to ask TP about where Pico would stay during her appointment she cut me off with a wave of her hand, assuring me and the rest of the staff that Pico was “mature for her age,” and would amuse herself in the waiting room while TP was in the exam room…and besides, if Pico needed anything, “you girls can just watch her for a bit.”
The office manager cut me off as I began to respond to TP that we’re working in a medical practice and are not babysitters…geesh! First cut off by the patient, and now by my supposed comrade. Thus, five minutes after I’d taken TP back to her exam room, when Pico opened the door to the waiting room and asked for (read: demanded that) someone to read her a book, I took her straight to the office manager (“She’s all yours.“).
Okay; so; it’s a year later; maybe there’s been some…uh, growth, in a year? TP is back; listening to her check in with JJ I can tell she’s still Her Haughtiness, and Pico is still with her and still obnoxious precocious. But mostly, Pico is still a young child – not a good fit for a gynecological exam room, no matter what mommy’s delusions opinions are as to her child’s specialness.
When I call TP back to an exam room, Pico follows her mother down the hallway. I ask if it is TP’s wish that Pico be in the exam room with her? If so, [5] I can check with Dr. B to see if that’s okay, then call Pico back to the room when the doctor is ready to see TP, but after I get TP settled for her exam I cannot leave her and her child alone in the room, as there are medical instruments and “potions” and such in the room that are not safe for….
TP laughs dismissively. “She’ll be fine right here,” she says, gesturing to what I called backstage – our office and work area (which included our lab and sink and patient restroom) – and not the waiting room. Using my best bared-teeth-disguised-as-a-smile, I try once more to explain to TP that we had medical instruments and urine samples coming in and out of exam rooms and in and out of lab areas – backstage is neither an appropriate nor safe area for her child, whom, we had noted from past visits, was not content to sit in the waiting room and read a book or magazine…. [6]
“She’ll be fine,” TP repeats, adding, “I told her that you *girls* would keep her busy.”
I inform TP that JJ will escort Pico back to the waiting room, which JJ does (after throwing a bit of stink eye my way) while I take TP to her exam room.
After I’ve prepped TP for her exam, I catch Dr. B in the hallway as he exits another exam room. I hand him TP’s chart, tell him that she is his next patient, remind him of who she is and that she’d brought her kid with her even after we’d asked her, last year, and this year when she scheduled her appointment, *not* to do so….
Dr. B, busy as always (and behind schedule as always), was not one to confront a patient about such matters. He glances through TP’s chart, knocks on her exam room before entering, gives me one of his enigmatic smirks, and says, “Handle it.”
So, I handle it.
About four minutes after Dr. B enters her mother’s exam room, Pico opens the waiting room door and marches through, just as I am escorting a used speculum to the autoclave area. JJ is on the phone with a patient; I dump the speculum in the lab sink and, as I wash my hands, ask Pico if she’s come back to use the restroom.
“My mommy told me I could wait back here and that you’d play with me.” Pico brazenly walks around the front desk and sits down on what would have been my chair.
“Well, then,” I say. “Okay…. How would you like to play a game?” Before she can answer I giggle and shake my head. “Oops; never mind. This is a really cool game; I don’t think you’re old enough to handle it.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Yes I can! She leaps up from the chair and claps her hands. “Please, I can play it!”
“It’s called… “I pause for dramatic effect, “Captured By The KGB.”
JJ, still on the phone, shoots me a sideways, what-are-you-up-to? glance.
I steer Pico back to the chair and explain the game to her: She is an undercover spy, on a secret mission for her country. But the Russian secret police have captured her and are going to interrogate her – “Do you know what interrogate means?”
I can tell she doesn’t, but she enthusiastically nods her head.
“The Russians consider you to be an enemy spy, but you are an American hero, and the free world is depending on you. The Russians have special powers: when they question you, if they look into your eyes, they can get you to say anything. So, you must sit here, cross your arms like this (I fold her arms across her chest) and squeeze your eyes shut as tightly as you can, that’s good! Remember, they’ll try to trick you, to get you to open your eyes and speak to them so that they can use their mind control tricks on you.”
The American spy remains in her chair, silent, her arms clutching her torso, her eyes squinched into slits, while I finish prepping the ultrasound room for an upcoming amniocentesis. When I return to the front desk, Pico is beginning to fidget. I see her eyelids flutter – “Uh uh,” I warn her, “The KGB is right here! Don’t let them see that you can see them.”
“I don’t like this game,” she whines. “I’m tired of this game.”
“SHHH, THEY CAN HEAR YOU.” I assure her of her importance, and how she MUST be silent, and keep her eyes shut and her arms crossed.
As I pull charts for the next day’s appointments and arrange test result callbacks on my desk, I tell Pico that she is doing well. Her chin begins to quiver, and she emits soft whimpers. “You must stay strong,” I assure her, “and those evil Russians won’t get any information out of you.”
“Robyn!” JJ puts her hand over her phone’s mouthpiece and softly hisses at me. “Do something!” Just as it seems that Pico is going to burst into tears, Dr. B exits TP’s exam room. Pico jumps up from my chair and wipes at her eyes; I pat her on the shoulder and say, “Good job – you were so brave! Those bad agents are gone now.”
Dr. B looks at Pico, at me, then back at Pico; we hear the exam door open, and Pico races down the hallway and flings herself at her mother. “Mommy! I want to go home now.” Pico tugs at her mother’s sleeve. “Can we go home now?”
“What’s going on?” Dr. B asks. I say nothing; JJ quickly offers up, “I’m sure *Robyn* will be happy to explain it to you. It’s…top secret. Spy stuff.”
It is my turn to smirk enigmatically. “I *could* tell you,” I murmur to Dr. B, as I stride past him on my way to the ultrasound room, “but I’d have to kill you.”
During my next three years with the practice, TP has three more annual exams. She never again brings her daughter with her.
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [7]
* * *
Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
I hate it when moiself finds out that some celebrity/ (in)famous person whom I thought was dead, isn’t. [8]
* * *
May you refrain from smoking anything, pesticide-free or otherwise;
May never expect anyone to act as unpaid sitters for your child;
May you remain strong despite enduring nefarious KGB tactics;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] I wish I could have heard their stories, but they stood up, continuing to converse as they left the restaurant.
[2] Palo Alto, CA.
[3] She’d likely get the “Karen” label, today.
[4] I was told that term is Finnish slang for little monster.
[5] Over the years I recall a few women who wanted their daughters to be with them in the exam room (as a form of “education,”), usually for a routine OB visit, but always when the girls were older – teens or preteens.
[6] We did have appropriate-aged reading materials for kids, as well as a few toys, in the waiting room.
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[8] Feel free to let your mind roam on that one.
