14 Subtle Signs Your OBGYN Might Not Make a Good Critique Partner
By Jan O'Hara | November 21, 2011 |
One of these days I’ll write an honest-to-goodness helpful post that will be linked to and referenced and included in MFA syllabi for years to come.
In the meantime you get this – the product of a stressful month in which the O’Hara family surmounted health, dental, and relationship challenges. Since I cope by using black humor, be ye warned about the type of content that greets you below the fold.
14 Subtle Signs Your OBGYN Might Not Make a Good Critique Partner
1. Her waiting room is dominated by the sounds of a fountain, decorated with pictures of rivers, furnished in shades of yellow, and the staff are too busy sniping at one another to notice that visitors sit with crossed legs.
2. The patient resource library is stocked with brochures like Why Self-Pubbing Will Make You Go Blind.
3. Once in the exam room, you’re told to change before the specialist arrives. He keeps you waiting for an hour. When you take him to task for the delay, the only apology you get is for the poor quality of the dead-tree gown furnished by the legacy hospital.
4. She has incense burning in front of her certificates and diplomas, and she uses sentences like these:
- “Aren’t you glad you’re going to be examined by a Yale-educated physician?”
- “Isn’t it wonderful a Harvard grad learned to warm this speculum?”
- “I feel so fortunate that my Ivy-League education helped me know how to help you.”
5. Within minutes, you find yourself wanting to point at your face and say, “My eyes are up here…”
6. It’s while he’s sliding the speculum in that he wants to debate the merits of last year’s Man Booker prize.
7. They don’t know their way around lubricant, so either they
- Use too little, so you’re forcibly reminded of last year’s IRS audit
- Use so much you qualify as a test site for British Petroleum’s oil-dispersing foam
8. He likes to talk. With his hands. During the exam. As a consequence, you’re reconsidering your feelings about the abstract pattern of the ceiling tile, which you formerly considered soothing.
9. While extracting his elbow from your privates, he congratulates you on being female so that you don’t have to go through a prostrate exam.
10. When you ask her position on flaccid prose and dangling modifiers, she pulls out her prescription pad.
11. You learn you have a dangerous illness when he vomits on the floor.
12. When you object to her taking pictures of your pathology for the medical students, she says, “I wouldn’t dream of being that inconsiderate. This is for my blog.”
13. He wants you to vote on his blog’s name and these are your choices:
- Writing from the Trenches
- iVulva
- eHymeny
14. Two hours after your appointment, you bump into the specialist in the middle of Safeway. As is appropriate, they take their cue from you about whether you will acknowledge one another in public. (You decide not.) But as they turn away, they smile knowingly and sniff their fingers in a long, stuttering inhalation.
Peeps, this is Monday and I’m in serious need of laughs. Please feel free to take off the gloves and use your fertile imaginations to add to my list. Go deep. I’m sure a missed a million or two bad puns. ;-)
A USA Today bestselling author, former family physician and academic, Jan O’Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). Her latest Christmas novella, The Cowboy’s Comeback Christmas, is part of a 9-author-strong anthology (A Cowboy This Christmas: A Sweet Romance Anthology). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer’s Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
OMG-spot, Jan. This is hilarious. Wrong… but hilarious. :D
I am pretty sure that I have already read something similar to this list before. This is too funny but on the other hand I have felt bad during examinations when I was younger. The last time it was during my pregnancy. He talked right into between my legs during the examination and I felt really bad.
Once during an exam, I had the doctor discuss details about writing a “health” column for the newspaper. (I was the editor). While distracting, I was thinking, “Please, do I need to talk about work during this….”
Jan, you’ve already made my Monday better. Thanks! : )
Gosh, it sounds like such fun I’m considering trans-gendering. NOT!
Oh Jan! I agree with Lydia, this is so wrong. But if loving this is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. You had me at the yellow river. Then, when I got back from the restroom, I continued to laugh until I cried. But I know you too well now to be caught with coffee in my mouth while reading, so no spit-take today. Can I nominate a ‘Back in the Saddle Again,’ as a fouth blog name choice?
Now that’s what I call a good start to the week! :-D
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Oh, lordy.
I’m so glad I’d finished my mug of tea when I read this.
That was frigging hilarious and reminded me of how much I hate speculums, which should be listed as an instrument of torture under the Geneva Convention.
Jan,
Your writing is so vivid, I cringed when I read that smelling of the fingers. I’d just die! ;-)
Have a great week!
Michelle
Cringetastic! Very funny.
So funny! Reminded me that a speculum free day is a GOOD day!!!
omg. HAHAHAHA!
jan, *hugs* to you for a tough
month. i hope everything eases
for you as we head into more holidays.
OMG Jan I laughed till I cried. The talking with the hands and then the extracting of his elbow. Oh my lordy I so needed that hysterical laughter today!!!!!
Thank you, girl!!
Number 7 destroyed me! I think I have a hernia now…
VERY funny. Brought a smile to my face today and I needed that. Thank goodness I’ve NEVER had an exam like that!
Patti
Too funny! As others have said, wrong… but way too funny. This was perfect for Monday morning!
Bwahahaha! Jan, you crack me up.
eHymeny – I love it! And most docs would also (speaking as a woman doc who did a bazillion pelvic exams).
Oh Jan, what a great way to start out a Monday morning. I had to wipe coffee off my computer screen. Thanks for the hilarious post and I hope this week is much better for you and your family than the last few have been. :)
Guys. Thank you so much for playing along! I’m glad I didn’t manage to offend everyone on the blog.
Thank you so much for reminding me that I will continue to wait for Star Trek style medicine regarding such issues. Hands that touch a speculum will never come near me.
Having had hip surgery at the ripe old age of two, I decided at a very young age that babies were not in my future. The doctors have already had their crack at me.
When you take him to task for the delay, the only apology you get is for the poor quality of the dead-tree gown furnished by the legacy hospital.
*dais!!!*
I don’t know if my sudden need to go to the bathroom is due to the description of the waiting room or the hysterical laughter! HILARIOUS!
The one that made me smile all day: Within minutes, you find yourself wanting to point at your face and say, “My eyes are up here…” Mmhm.
LOVE IT! Thanks for the laughs. I used to always see my OB at the grocery store where I worked, but what made it so weird was that she didn’t know who I was, lol.
Not just black humour, diabolical! You nailed them all with laser-like precision.
Very funny and a great start to the week! Thank you!
Jan, you are one sick puppy. I LOVE YOU.
iVulva, OMG, that had me on the FLOOR! LOOOOLLLL
ewww…
but funny!
Is there any other profession where a person would be thrilled to be called “sick” and “wrong? LOL
Thank you all so much. It’s so funny that different bits seemed snagged different people.
I am too incoherent to comment because my eyes are streaming, laughing. But one of my most WTF moments was when the GYN had her hand in and up there and received a phone call which her assistant held at her ear so she could speak because, you know, her hands were occupied and discussed a party she planned to go to that evening while I lay there, legs spread and feeling like a total idiot. All in a day’s work, eh?
Quite like a slide show I once saw, which was supposed to amuse the patients sitting in the waiting room. One slide said,” Symptoms of a cardiac arrest” followed by the next one, that said, “Death”.
Thanks Jan, I desperately needed this laugh today!
Well thank you for returning the favor with a funny story of your own. Yours is worse, because it’s true!
I don’t even know OBs like those exist. Good thing mine’s a female and she’ very accommodating. I don’t want someone belligerent and a know-it-all feeling he knows everything in this world. Haha! Thanks for sharing! I love your blog :)
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