Abigail M. Schilling

Several weeks ago, I was at the doctor yet again. I go to one of the corporate doctors which is cool because I can get an appointment almost whenever I want and the pharmacy is right there and I can see my lab results online and stuff. And I can still have a primary care provider who "knows" my "body."

Every visit follows the exact same protocol:

1. Get a number.
2. Get called to the check in counter. (This system ensure privacy.)
3. Check in, pay my copay ($10), get a receipt. Answer various questions like "is this a work or work-related injury?"
4. Putz around waiting room reading Parents magazine until my name is called.
5. Enter a very tiny office with a scale.

In the tiny office a nurse or a medical assistant of some kind asks me personal questions. When was your last menstruation? Why are you here? Etc. Then they ask me to step on the scale. (They've stopped measuring my height. Is that weird?)

When you get weighed at the Corporate Doctor Office you are not allowed to take your shoes off or anything. Which is actually kind of awesome because then you can make up your weight. Oh, that number isn't right, I'm wearing this huge sweatshirt. I'm at least twelve pounds less than that.

Lately, I've been opting out of bringing my whole bag o' tricks into the office so I usually just grab my wallet and my inhaler and my cell phone and my keys. With nothing to put them in. I can hold them all in my hands, but when I'm asked to step on the scale I set them all down on the counter next to the rubber gloves.

6. After being weighed the assistant type exits the room so quickly (motioning for me to follow) that I always get very flustered trying to collect my belongings and keep an eye on which way she's turning down the hall way. Nine times out of ten she disappears into my room without me seeing and I step slowly down the hall trying to act breezy and find my room.

7. Once in my room, my temperature is taken and blood pressure is attempted to be taken.

I don't know anything about blood pressure. I do know that I've never had an problems with it (thus the lack of information) until recently when I was diagnosed with a fever and high blood pressure. I had come in for completely non-causal reasons. I asked them to take my temperature again at the end of that visit and I didn't actually have a fever, it was the Starbucks and caffeine running through me. I didn't ask them to retake my blood pressure because I hate hate hate those life-sucking gadgets, but I figured that I probably didn't actually have high blood pressure either.

Sure enough, the next time I returned I was praised for getting my blood pressure back down. They were amazing at the tremendous change in my numbers in only three weeks. They asked what I was doing differently. I was all "...".

Anyway, this last time that I was there they couldn't get my blood pressure to read. It's a newfangled machine that reads the score automatically. It tightens and tightens and tightens until it can't anymore and then it slowly releases moment by moment while it takes the bp. With me it would get about 60 percent untightened, realize it didn't have a score and then tighten up again. Cutting off my circulation all together.

While this humiliating tightening was happening, my doctor entered my room which was weird since I was still with the nurse lady. She seemed surprised to see the nurse lady who seemed surprised to see the doctor. The doctor was all, "Oh! You're here! I wanted to make sure the patient wasn't in here waiting for you." The nurse said something about a rubric. My doctor was all, "Oh, well since we don't have that paper anymore I don't know who is where." I guess she thought I was in the room by myself because they don't use a daily handout that says which nurse assistant friends are in which offices that day like they used to.

After she left the nurse lady apologized and said that the transition (to computers) has been hard since there is so much tech mistrust. She said that their whole branch was instructed to go paperless but there was some trouble with some people. She looked embarrassed, not because the doctor made her feel like the absence of daily worksheet was her fault, but because someone would actually choose not to make a transition to computers.

That's when I knew she was my people.

I must have relaxed because the sixth tightening (the fabled "last try") finally got a bp score.

(Blood pressure = still normal.)