Step-family Talk

A few days ago I spoke of taking my stepdaughter to the doctor’s office and mentioned that I would talk more of that rather uncomfortable experience. I said I would write more on it, and even though I am not too keen to dredge up the memory, here goes.

Wednesday morning I pulled into a fresh coated asphalt parking lot. The sun was brilliant, it’s intense light cast a glare from the windows of the office building. I walked ever closer to the intense glare with my eyes nearly closed. My stepdaughter is in tow, it is for her sake that we are coming to the building. She has been complaining of stomach cramps for over two months. Usually her complaints came just before school started and she is ever so eager to find a way out of classes so we dismissed them as an attempt to play hooky. Now it is her summer vacation and she has no need to make the excuse.

I already suspect what the problem is and I have told her how I think she should handle it. She eats junk food all the time and never drinks water. I’ve tried explaining to her that her body is mainly water and almost all functions of the body need water to work efficiently. She dismisses my suggestions as quickly as we dismiss her complaints. What do I know after all? I’m not a doctor. So, after hearing her complain for the last two days, I called my doctor, maybe there really was a problem. I doubted it, but I didn’t want to be accused of being neglectful. If her problems turned out to be no more than a result of a poor diet, at least I would have a doctor on my side. So, here we were.

I pulled the door open and let my daughter walk through first. Inside the lighting is far less intense and my eyes open in relief. We walked down the plain white hallways and into the reception room. I announced our arrival to the lady behind a closed glass window and inform her that my daughter is a new patient. She smiles at me and hands me a series of disclosure forms and some sheets for billing and insurance records. Everything was going as normal. I completed the necessary forms and returned them to the desk. The lady smiled again, a cold draft passed across me, I blinked the sensation away and looked down. Another paper was in my hand. It was a medical history form. No big deal, I’ve filled these out before. I called my daughter over. I asked her about any allergies. Had she ever been to the hospital before. Does she have headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath, bronchitis, stomach aches, tooth aches, etc…

Then it comes, and I know why the nurse was smiling. There is a section in the medical history section, that men have the privilege of skipping. I’m sure all you men out there have skimmed through the question out of curiosity. If your like me, though, you race pass them in search for that final line where you place your signature and know you are done filling out the form. I didn’t get to skip this section this time.

I’m a married man. My wife and I planned on having a baby, and as such I’ve gotten to learn more about a woman’s reproductive cycle than I ever wanted. I was also a major in English at a liberal arts college and got to hear enlightened woman read more odes to their monthly visitor than any man should ever have to hear. I thought such a background would have well prepared me for this moment. I saw the section titled, “For Woman Only,” and I steeled myself for questions.

Question 1: “Have you ever been pregnant?” Easy enough to answer. I wrote, “no.”

Question 2: “When was your last period?” I looked over at my daughter and the question would not form in my mouth. Since I didn’t want to appear stupid I closed it quick enough. I realized she’s thirteen. She is old enough to answer a few questions on her own. “Here,” I said and tossed the clipboard at her like it suddenly was some diseased bird that had fallen out of the sky to land in my lap. “You fill this out.”
I grabbed the nearest magazine to distract myself while she answered the questions, “Highlights.” I said to myself. “Oh good, I can find the hidden pictures.” My daughter filled out the questions in silence and I flipped the pages until I found the hidden pictures page. Naturally somebody had already circled them all. I chucked the magazine in disgust back to the table and looked for the television.

“I don’t remember when I had my last period.”

I ignored the words, instead I pretended to be caught up in a back pain commercial on the television. I hoped she would feel just as uncomfortable saying those words again as I was at hearing them. But, such was not my luck. “I don’t remember when I had my last period.”

“What do you mean you don’t remember?”

“I don’t know. I don’t keep track.”

“Why not?”

She just shrugged. I breathed deep. Now we really had to go into territory no stepfather should ever have to go. Instead of just writing down the date to a simple question. We had to go through a whole series of Q & A to get to the bottom of this.

“Obviously your not on it now or you would be able to answer this question.” I started with the obvious, “Err. You aren’t are you?”

“No.”

“Okay then, are you about to go on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you can’t recall the last time, then it must have been a while. So, your probably pretty close. Were you on it while you were at your dad’s?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Either it was just before you went to your dad’s or it was while you were at your dad’s”

Eventually after we pulled out calendars, applied some advanced mathematics, compared cryptic charts and astrological phenomena we narrowed down the event to one possible week and then picked a day smack dab in the middle. It was going to have to do. I signed the sheet and hope to never fill out one of those again.

I thought the uncomfortable portion was over. I was wrong. The nurse brought us into the back and she performed all the standard procedures that I was used to getting. She weighed her, took her temperature, measured her height, took her pulse, and checked her blood pressure. The nurse then asked us the standard questions. “What brings you here today?” “How long has the problem existed.” “What medicines is she taking?” “Is she allergic to anything?” I talked about my concerns of her diet and told her that I suspected this to be the problem but we wanted to rule out anything more serious.

The nurse nodded and took down all the information. Then she threw me the curve ball. She closed my daughter’s folder. She grabbed a pee cup and said,“Pee in this and when you get back put on this.” She handed her the dreaded hospital gown that doesn’t so much as offer dignity during an exam as it mocks dignity. Without another word she left the room with my daughter and closed me in the room with the gown my stepdaughter was going to have to change into.

I think I would have been okay if she had left the door open, but she didn’t I was trapped in the room waiting for my daughter to come back. I never even considered the possibility that I would be locked in a room with my daughter while she was expected to change and then wear an outfit that covered absolutely nothing. Just over a year ago, I had gone in to a doctor’s office with some extreme stomach pains. I was walked through a series of poses. The doctor pressed on my stomach in a few places, asked a bunch of questions. Then sent me for an MRI. I never had to get out of my street clothes, so it didn’t even occur to me that she would have to change.

The seconds ticked by, while I sat alone in the room with the gown. My pulse kicked in overdrive and I became panicky. I couldn’t understand why they would have closed me in the room. I had to escape. I listened at the door, but nobody came. Not until my stepdaughter returned. When I saw the door open and she was by herself I ducked out with a quickness and nearly ran down the hall towards the first person that looked like a nurse. She pointed me to the nurse that had questioned us and I asked her if there was any reason that I needed to be in the room from this point forward. I had given her all the information I had. She laughed at me (it was a friendly laugh) and asked if I would like to wait in the lobby. “Please, Yes.” I said.

She guided me back to the lobby and reminded me that I may be called upon. I took the first available seat and started reading up on networking. I found myself rereading most paragraphs as I kept getting distracted by the physical reactions I was still having. It was very near a panic attack. I probably would have been more calm if someone had asked me perform a State of the Nation Address.

Ten minutes later a nurse brought me in. They needed me to give permission to draw blood and to do an asthma test. We made it through a whole slew of tests. My pulse eventually returned to normal. I had managed to avoid the tests that required the hospital gown. And finally the doctor produced the x-rays they had taken. She showed my stepdaughter how blocked up her intestines were and explained that she needed to drink more water and eat better foods. It was almost word for word what I have been telling her for the past couple of months. But, I guess she needed a doctor to confirm that she was full of crap.