Missing squirrels

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Yippee kai yay, everybody, it's time to hear about Suebob's trip to the gynie doctor! Make some popcorn and gather round, kids.

First, have I told you about how much I loathe waiting at doctors offices? How very snarly and terrible I can become if forced to wait more than 15 minutes? How my old doctor had a note about what an awful person I was in my medical record? (How do I know that? Because I would be sitting in the exam room and the nurse would meander in, reading my chart. She would look down at the chart, then look up at me and I could always see it in her eyes. The "oh shit" look. The "here it comes" look. Her voice would be high and squeaky as she asked "And how are we today?" while waiting to have her head snapped off by the ogre.)

So you may be surprised to hear that today I waited one hour and 45 minutes PAST my original appointment time with nary a peep. Normally I would have turned into a benzene-spewing puff adder by then.

But I didn't get much sleep last night, so I was able to pass an only slightly uncomfortable hour sleeping in the exam room with my head down on a writing table, resting on my crossed arms a la third-grade-rainy-day-trapped-in-classroom naptime posture.

When my doc finally came in, I had slept about an hour and was too bleary to properly attack, so I decided to just let the whole thing drop. Anyway, I figured this was a person who was going to have her fingers up my hoo-ha in just moments and I thought I had better be polite to avoid any unfortunate incidents.

"So what are you doing for fun lately?" she asked to distract me, shortly before inserting various official-type objects in various places.

I took a deep breath and said that I had been blogging. Blogging is mainstream enough that everyone knows about blogging by now, right?

No, everyone has not heard of blogging.

"What's a blog?" she asked.

So I rambled on while she felt around for whatever they feel around for - missing squirrels or whatnot. I could see her face getting blanker and blanker.

I tried to figure a way to make her understand. This will get her, I thought

"From a medical standpoint, blogging is kind of interesting, because it gives people a way to talk about things that they never talk about otherwise - postpartum depression, breastfeeding, urinary incontinence..." I said.

I could see the skepticism and dismissiveness in her eyes.

"There's a lot of information out there on the internet, a lot of it is junk..."

Then I knew she didn't get it. That our opinions, our stories, our actual real-life experiences were reduced in her mind to the same category as herbal viagra spam and miracle cure websites.

Because what we say isn't approved by an esteemed body and it hasn't undergone peer review - it might as well not exist.

Here's what I have to say in return: hey, dinosaur. The old days are over, those times when people would come in and automatically bow to your white-coat authority.

You're smart, but you're not all-knowing. And I know you want to educate me, but listen up and let your patients educate you back. We have a lot to say. And we're not afraid to say it anymore.

And next time? Don't keep this blogger waiting for an hour and 45 minutes. Or else the ogre will have to snap someone's head off.