hernias, referees, and other inevitable setbacks

   

    Playing sports and going to camps my whole life has brought about a few inevitabilities.  Soreness is a given, as well as the ice baths and ibuprofen that go along with it.  Officiating errors and poorly-behaved opponents are inevitable; you shake your head at the immaturity of youth and the honest mistakes of the senile and move on.  Routine physicals are just another in the list of things athletes deal with for the sake of their sport.

    After 13+ years of physicals, Beef had gotten into a pretty steady routine.  Come in, read "Redbook" (every doctor's waiting room has "Redbook", period) while waiting, get called in 20-25 minutes late.  A nurse reaffirms that all your vital signs and bodily functions are chugging along: "Your eyesight, hearing, tonsils, nostrils, reflexes, blood pressure, heart rate, and immunizations are all fine."  "You need to lose weight."  etc., etc.

    The doctor comes in, talks like he remembers/cares about something in your life from the last physical, reiterates that you need to lose weight, starts putting the cold stethoscope wherever he wants.  You lay down, he pokes and prods your ribs for a while, keeps the conversation going no matter how forced it is, and calmly reaches right into your boxers and goes to town.  You cough, he throws away that latex glove, signs your form, and you're on your way.

    This is what I expected when I scheduled a routine physical at the John W. Wilce (a great Buckeye football coach in the early 1900s) Student Health Center.  The nurse did her deal.  Beef read up on the latest arbitrary-number-of-things you "Must Know" or "Must Do" to "Be thin/sexy/empowered/assertive" in the waiting room. All that was left was a quick feeling-up from a stranger and I was all set.

    Walk into the small exam room.  A nurse walks in.  She doesn't take my vital signs, she starts examining the sheet the other nurse filled out.  Doesn't tell me when the doctor will be in--doesn't tell me to change into one of those uncomfortable gowns.  Somewhere between "Do you have any allergies?" and "you need to lose weight", it dawns on me: this isn't a nurse.  This is the doctor. 

    My first reaction was positive.  I mean, since we're talking a physically and emotionally vulnerable college student here, she's definitely just going to ask if everything is okay and take my word for it.  I'm not even wearing one of those uncomfortable gowns.  This might be the easiest physical I've ever had.  Even when she tells me to sit on the exam table and starts checking my breathing with her stethoscope (not cold--apparently female doctors are more attune to the difference between Beef's skin and stainless steel at room temperature) I'm still confident that we will skip anything that would get a male doctor with a female patient sued for sexual harassment.

    Literally, she is old enough to be my grandmother.  She has trouble reading the standard physical form, so she does so aloud, as though that will somehow make the print bigger on the page.  This kindly old woman, who did not even have me put on an uncomfortable gown, is NOT going to check for a hernia. 

    "Alright Benjamin, stand up for me".  Here we go, home stretch.  Tell me I'm in good health, and I need to lose weight, and to have fun as a counselor this summer. 

    "I need to check for a hernia.  Have you had that done before?"

    "Yes," is what I said.  "By a male doctor who understands the need for caution and discretion when investigating the dudes, always under an uncomfortable gown,"  is what I thought.

    We both stood there for a moment before she said, and I quote,

    "Why don't you lower your britches Benjamin."  Are you forking kidding me.  This has gone from potentially the easiest physical to by far the worst.  What choice did I have? The athletic shorts and grey boxers were around my ankles.  The cool latex missed the mark the first time and then, as some sort of sick compensation, struck the mark more forcefully than necessary. This happened twice.  It is hard to imagine anything more awkward.

    I don't think I'm a sexist.  Women have every right, and just as much ability, and should have equal opportunity to be doctors.  That said, we really should have a same-gender physical examination rule--and before the horde of feminists who follow Beef Thoughts jump down my throat, let me pose a hypothetical.  Would you want to be alone in a college examination room with a 65 year old semi-retired male doctor who you'd never met, with free reign to 'exam' whatever he thought necessary?

    Alright then.

Ols: I propose a you own it, you poke it man law.

           

 

  

the rest of the thoughts            5.29.06