My Visit to the Doctor

I was excited to visit the doctor today. Due to complicated insurance issues and the fact that it took me TWO MONTHS to get an appointment with a doctor that was close by and covered by Medicaid, I haven't really received prenatal care all summer (oops). I knew how I felt though and was careful to monitor myself and any weird issues that came up I simply googled and realized they were all normal. This morning, I had an appointment with a nice female OB/GYN over at our favorite teaching hospital. I was actually looking forward to it, I like hearing the baby's heart beat and I had no idea how much I weighed or anything, so I was interested to find out.

And geez, I don't know about your doctors, but I AM SO glad I don't usually see one of those. She treated me like I was a CHILD. A silly, capricious child at that. She tried to make me take the glucose tolerance test but I had decided after careful research that it was unnecessary and I did not want to do it. She said something to the effect of "I know it tastes yucky, but it's not that bad..." Yeah, that's it, I don't want to do it because it's "yucky." I don't want to do it because our health care system is in shambles and I'm actually deliberately deciding what I want done to my body. I have no predisposition for diabetes, and even if I did have it, I wouldn't even need to change my diet very much (I'm over the multiple bowls of ice cream a day... I'm only craving veggies nowadays. And spaghetti). And I seriously doubt my baby is going to be over-large. I've gained ten pounds in 32 weeks of pregnancy.

Then, she noticed on my chart that I brought from Utah that the silly CNMs didn't test me for HIV at my first appointment! How could they! I figure I was OK with doing that test though, I mean I did work in close contact with HIV patients and cleaned up more than one bodily fluid spill, so there's a teen-tiny chance (like 1 in 1,000,000,000,000) I may have HIV and I've never actually been tested for it so why not. I consented to that test. I think when she thought I might not she started on a rant about how dangerous HIV can be to an unborn baby, etc. I wanted to look at her and say something to the effect of "yes, I know, my sophomore year of college I actually did a research project on MTCT in South Africa. I can give you charts, research, anything you could possibly ever want to know about MTCT and preventing it." She also said something about my not being sure whether or not my husband had more sexual partners than just me. I told her I fully trusted he did not. She looked at me like I was crazy.

She listened to my heart and then told the med student to do the same. They then stood over me having a little lesson on heart murmurs without once looking down at me to tell me what they were talking about in lay terms. Fortunately, I already knew about this murmur having discovered it myself and asking my midwife about it months ago. And I understand medical terms so I understood what they were talking about but how rude. Like I'm just some stupid person I couldn't possibly understand what they were talking about.

And she was a nice doctor. Maybe too nice. But I didn't like the feeling that I was incompetent. And I just re-read this and I kind of sound snotty in it. My mom turned me into a medical snob.


.... and because I like all of the comments about how tiny I am and how great I look....