7:47PM I rushed in, 2 minutes late for my appointment. This appointment that I’ve been dreading and avoiding for a decade now. This appointment that has caused me so much anxiety and fear of rejection and vulnerability that I’d just decided it wasn’t something I wanted to subject myself to. But – Dr. Hester, being amazing and comforting and calming and exhibiting the same energy vibrations that Elese Lebsack does left me after my last appointment with a warm fuzzy enough to schedule one. I scheduled it. I rushed over after tutoring. And I was worried about being late.
I *hate* being late. I am one of those pride-myself-for-always-being-on-time people. Anyways.
Sign in, sit down. The new assistant comes to the front and despite my requests a half a dozen times by now to change my fucking chart to be reflective of my initial instead of my birth name, she belts it through the waiting room. I shift nervously and my gf gets up and I follow without anyone in the waiting room noticing the play.
Weigh in. 180#. Nice. I must have a lot of change in my pockets today, and my jacket is obviously heavy.
Into the room we go. Blood pressure. Fine, though if my birth name is uttered again I’m sure I will bust the glass on the gauge. “What are you here for today?” she asks.
“My….(stutter) yearly?”.
“Oh,” she says “It says here a checkup”.
“yes, well, it is a check up”.
Did she ask you what your appointment was for when they booked it?”.
“Yes, well, no… I told them I needed to get a check up and they told me they had a 7:45 with the doctor I’d wanted and they said okay, see you then”.
She looks nervous and says she didn’t know that, so she hadn’t set up the room. Then she looks at my gf while tapping away at the keys on the computer.
“Are you still taking testosterone?”
“Yes, once a week” I say, looking at the back of her head looking at my gf.
“when was your last menstrual cycle?”.
At this, my gf and I are both confused. Does she think that the appointment is for me or for her? My gf responds that she should probably ask me. The girl admits that she’s new. I try to break the splintering ice by joking that I was a test patient and they stuck her with the hardest patient she could get as a newbie.
“Okay, so I’m going to go get the things to get the room set up. Is everything the same?”
I’m confused and not sure what she’s asking. “I”m sorry?”
“Is everything the same?”
“Is what the same. I don’t know what this is supposed to look like. The last time I did this I was being rushed through a basic training medical checkup”
“But it’s all the same?” Waving towards her lower half.
I am aggravated. No, not aggravated, embarrassed.
Girlfriend to the rescue, “everything is the same”.
She’s embarrassed even when she returns to the room with the special supplies, and tells me she is leaving now and to take off all of my clothes.
“All of them?”
“yes, the doctor will be in shortly”.
I don’t understand why I have to get naked, but I do after some grumbling. Gf is reassuring as ever. There is a knock at the door and in peeks a head to find gf sitting in a chair and me standing behind a paper sheet, having not had enough time to even get my socks off.
“Hiiiii” … enter older lady with an aircast.
“Hello”
“Uhm… we’re sorry but we didn’t know that you were coming in for a pap. I’m going to see if the doctor can do it, but we may not be able to”
“Okay”… I stand holding up the sheet.
NAKED.
My gf and I exchange our “not impressed” looks. I’m embarrassed beyond belief and feeling overly vulnerable now so I get dressed in a hurry. While dressing my gf says “probably some feedback needs to be given about their training program. I agree. For being a trans-friendly clinic, your newbie had no idea how to handle a transman live and in living color. After a few minutes the older lady returns.
“Yahhh, um, I’m sorry, but we’re not going to be able to do this. Is there anything else that the doctor can do for you today? A prescription refill? We can schedule another appointment for you”
When I say awkward silence and stillness you could cut with a knife – I mean it.
Another appointment? Do you really think I’m going to go through this again? You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I tell her I will just wait for my doctor (who I really really did like after our one appointment, I mean – obviously I liked her enough to schedule this dreaded fucking exam of my middle earth) to refill my prescription. She apologizes again and tells me to come out and reschedule when ready. I do, knowing I have no desire to keep the appointment we’re scheduling but my face is hot and I’m nervous and if they retook my blood pressure again, surely they’d get a mind-blowing number. I go back into the room. My gf comes in a few seconds later.
We wait. We wait because I want to see “my” doctor. I just want some validation in the form of a smile or a pat or a handshake.
We wait for 30 fucking minutes, and after the 5th time of saying I really just want to leave. We do.
I ask for my copay to be applied to another visit.
The older lady tells me she’s going to write up some feedback about the situation for the clinic and asks me for the best number for the assistant manager to contact me about what happened. I’m racing to get out of there like a bird stuck in a drain pipe. The older lady keeps asking if I’m going to come back, once, twice, the third time I was almost out of earshot of it. The newbie assistant looks pitifully at me from behind the desk. My gf smiles, not having revealed to me yet that she’s told older lady that it took 10 years for me to schedule this appointment, and that they blew it, she smiles proudly and holds my hand as we leave the building.
It’s the first time since we’ve dated that she instinctively paused once we left to cue ME to have a cigarette. I was quiet. She was consoling and apologetic, but still I felt bad that she was having to be exposed to the embarrassment.
I do not feel as if I was mistreated. I feel as if I was mishandled. Not due to malice, but ignorance. My gf and I both saw what can happen with the lack of training in situations, and why so many transmen don’t get checked regularly. I’m unsure I will keep my second appointment. I am sure that feedback will be given.
I am sure that I love my gf, who then took me to Babeland for a little shopping and over to the War Room to see my bestie and a double jack and ginger.
And I love that when I was in the car, trying to sort out how I felt about what’d happened. Was I angry? Sad? disappointed? embarrassed? and asked her how she would summarize what’d happened… she said:
“EPIC Fail”
It was the laugh I needed.