A Tenuous Relationship

I had a routine physical recently. Now I can’t stand doctors. I don't think they really know much more than you or I or anyone attuned to their body and yet they play it like they do with that ridiculous doctor arrogance. In reality doctors are more like garage mechanics with biology degrees. I saw an interview once where a doctor was telling an interviewer that in the body most things heal themselves. I have adhered to that notion, eaten well, stayed fit and learned the art of minor home surgery for a variety of ailments-while developing my own, I believe much more practical, theories on human health. But I occasionally have some questions for my internist-we, need I say, have a tenuous relationship.

I wanted to know my testosterone level so I could, as I told my doctor, “establish a baseline.” This is so the minute I am less horny or tired or whatever condition I think can be explained by a precipitous dip in testosterone levels, I can get juice legally. As I am in the examination room explaining this to my doctor she is not buying it. We move on.

“Hold old are you?”

“41,” I reply.

“In the early forties we usually do a prostate exam.”

I instantly loose it, I explain that the prostate exam occurs at age 45; everybody knows that, I have 4 more years.

“Well we like to do it in the early 40’s so we can” she pauses and adds, “establish a baseline.”

As I said it is a tenuous relationship.

I go on to explain that men are prepared for this from an early age, it is a milestone-not one recognized by “hey, I get to have my prostate checked in 5 years” but “thank god I don’t have to have my prostate checked for 5 more years.” The stories are horrifying, from descriptions of the various positions-on back with legs in lady stirrups, all fours or the most horrific, on knees with chest on exam table and ass straight up ---oh dear god the horror….the horror.

I actually managed to charm her, she laughs and gives me a pass. However now I am intrigued and my wife is out of town.

Observe this pathology; my doctor is a woman because several years ago when I had to choose my doctor, as discussed I knew the day would come when that person would stick their finger up my ass. Knowing this I chose a female doctor-simply because if a finger, other than my own (for strictly hygienic reasons), is going up my ass I would rather have it be attached to a female then a male. I should have known but just didn’t anticipate it being a matronly Chinese woman.

We begin, I am now in the green open-back paper smock, clearly made by the same folks who make the rain gear handed out at university graduations—which is a really garbage bag with arm holes. She asks me to lie on my side and pull my knees up to my chest. “OK” she tells me, “I am going to use a lot of lube and it will be cold.” She does, it is. “I am inserting my finger,” I didn't need her to tell me that, surprisingly this was not a problem as she really did use a lot of lube, “I am circling the anus to check for (I think she said fissures) and now I am touching the prostate.” Which caused an electric sensation to shoot through me. Not a pleasant one, but tolerable. “and we’re done.”

She tells me to sit up; I slide upright. While she puts drops on the-was just in my asshole 10 seconds ago-finger and tells me she is checking the fecal matter for colorectal something or other I missed because I am thinking there’s my shit on your finger, but I just showered—I am ashamed.

Now she hands me the box of tissues and says, “clean yourself up, get dressed and come see me in my office.” As she is telling me this I am taking a few tissues feeling a bit, oh I don’t know, odd. She says, “no, the whole box,” with a firm but reassuring tone that just made me melt.

Moments later in her office I sit across from her at her desk in one of two chairs that were not in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement, which I corrected before I sat down. I am surprisingly OK with the fact that this woman just anally penetrated me. I am however arranging her furniture to be more Feng Shui. We go on to discuss family medical history and the fact that I have low good cholesterol but fortunately very low bad cholesterol. She tells me the low good cholesterol will be a factor in heart disease but there is nothing I can do about it. We are looking at her computer and I ask another question about one of the results on my blood test and she seemed perplexed causing her to open a browser and google it where she proceeds to click the Wikipedia result. No, really.

Now this is about the third time this has happened to my wife, a friend or me. Where the doctor, whom you just tossed what you believe to be an easy one, has googled the question. Shit, I can do that. I often do, running down the list of symptoms until I have either mad cow or perimenopause. I know I should be all hey it's the democratization of information and isn't it great doctors finally have access to blah blah blah. This stands as absolute confirmation that doctors don't know jack more than any concerned citizen. I remind my doctor her kind were still using leeches 50 years ago. To which she replies we actually never stopped.

My wife got very ill on our honeymoon because some drunk Vikings did not cook chicken long enough. She spent a month shitting and was on a course of no less than 4 kinds of antibiotics including Cipro-the one for anthrax, before a blood test finally revealed she had something called Campylobacter jejuni—which is essentially e. coli. Her doctor googles this and finally gets the right anti-biotic on the web, the regular open web not some special physician’s pharmacological matrixed network—and writes the script from the results of a google query.

Now I imagine there were about 187,000 results returned in about 0.6 seconds, which one did she use. She did, however, get the right one.

Did I say tenuous?