Manhattan Me

I had my first visit to a local NYC doctor earlier this week. I’ve been going to the same family practice for as long as I can remember, but I realized that I don’t want to have to run to Connecticut with every sore throat or stuffy nose. And so, off I went to a doctor located across the street from my apartment (talk about local).

The address of the office said it was in Suite 1L, so when I strolled up to the address listed on my info print out, I was surprised to find myself in, none other than an apartment building. A doorman asked me whom I was there to see, I gave him the doctor’s name and he pointed down the hallway. I walked past real live apartments until I got to 1L (listing it as “Suite 1L” is a little misleading, wouldn’t you agree?). I opened the door to a makeshift waiting room with a front desk and about three chairs for patients to sit in. I saw that the bathroom had a bathtub in it—yes, this was really an apartment turned office. I couldn’t help noticing there was no hand sanitizer to be found anywhere around the office. Leo, the receptionist, gave me a stack of paperwork to fill out.

I have a thing about doctors, and maybe I’m crazy, but I just don’t understand why they need to know how often I wear a seatbelt or if I wear a helmet when I bike ride. Or if I bike ride at all. I was told when I made the appointment that the doctor did not do OB/GYN and that I would need to find one in New York. If this lady isn’t an OB/GYN then why, might I ask, was I answering the following questions;

When was your last menstrual cycle?

How many days does your cycle last?

How frequent are your periods?

Shit, I should have studied for this test. I’m lucky if I know when my last period is, let alone how long it lasts or how frequent it is. Following those questions were:

Are you sexually active?

What method of birth control do you use?

Is your current partner: Male Female Both

Seriously? On what basis does the doctor need to know these things? And for my method of birth control, does mace and a self-defense class I took in high school count?

I skipped a lot of questions—including if I wear my seatbelt, because there was just no logical explanation for why this doctor who’d set up shop in an apartment would need to know such a thing. Finally, a nurse took me down the small hallway of 3 rooms, one of which had a little puppy poking his head out of the door. The sight of a dog in a doctor’s office with no hand sanitizer almost had me running for the door, but I pressed on, convinced this was some colossal joke. Peggy, the nurse, told me to take my boots off so I could get weighed and have my height measured. When she was done she told me to sit on the examination table.

Me: “Can I put my boots back on?”

Peggy: “Oh, no. It’s all going to come off in a minute, anyway.”

I felt like I was on a bad first date. I will never understand why I need to strip down to my underwear so a doctor can listen to my heartbeat and push on my stomach. Finally, the doctor came in (I can’t even believe I’m still referring to her as one) saying, “Hi. We don’t shake hands here, seeing as it’s a doctor’s office and all.” Maybe hand sanitizer would remedy that problem? She didn’t even wash up before she examined me.

But here’s what really pissed me off. Why in hell does this lady have me sitting in my underwear in a gown that won’t close while she hasn’t even taken her sunglasses off yet?