I had a HUGE surprise at the doctor about 3 years ago now. I was getting ready to start a new job and being a nurse, it required a pretty complete physical. Well, I at that time had severe "white Coat" syndrome. I only would allow one doctor to examine me and that was my very own Doc. So I talked my director of nursing into letting me go and see my own private doc in place of the house doc, which from all the others had said would be a "complete" physical with nakedness and everything. I basically told her she had two choices, either I quit, or she lets me see my personal doc. Two days later she handed me a very thick packed, sealed and I believe it had the company stamp covering the seal to ensure it hadn't been tampered with. So, I got on a plane in a few days, packet in hand, did what I had to do to get ready for my "appointment" and walked in to the waiting room. The secretary came and took the packet from me because she wanted to see if there was anything she needed to sign or copy first. She kept making jokes to me over the counter saying things like, "geeze, you trying to get into the FBI or gain top government security here or what? This packet is like 20 pages thick."
That sort of made me sink in my seat a bit, but then remembered, this is my boyfriend I'm coming to see, he's going to look at all the papers, maybe he might ask e a question or two, he will sign the rest and I will be on my merry way until he calls me later to go out to dinner. It's cool.
5 minutes later Doc came back around the corner to get me and take me back to this exam room, but before he did, he told his secretary to either move his last few appointments of the day or see if they would be willing to see the other doctor because my physical was going to take a lot longer that he had anticipated or allotted time fore. And with that he ushered me back to his exam room. When I opened the door I noticed first off a gown on the table, (that's never a good sign) and a urine cup on the sink, that's never a good sign either, both of those mean he probably isn't going to sign a few forms and let me leave, that means he's wanting to do real doctor stuff. Grrrrr.
He asked me to sit on the chair, he sat on the stool, he got out his computer and started going over all of my current meds, reactions etc. He asked me if I had any other complaints today and I told him that I drinking like a fish, diapheritic, lethargic, and doing the hot cold thing off and on all morning. I had very recently had kidney surgery, so all things mentioned sent up potential red flags, most likely leading to a post op infection possibly. So, let the games begin. Needless to say, I did get the most complete physical I have still every had to date that day. lol.
He picked up the urine cup and had me follow me to the bathroom. He told me it needed to be a witnessed urine sample because they were doing tox screen as part of the work physical. SO back in the bathroom I walked in, he stood at the doorway and faced out to give me some privacy. I managed to hit the cup, didn't have a lot to give him, but gave him al I had. His urine cups have strips on them that tell if you are possetive for different thing like drugs. He also took it back to the lab and stuck a stick in it to test for other things like lukocytes and all that fun stuff. The first thing he said after seeing my thick dark yellow urine was, "seems we need to have a little chat about your severe dehydration". We walked back into the exam room in silence. I didn't know what else to say, he was right, my urine looked liked thick tea. We both knew I knew better. So, moving on he picks up the neatly folded gown off the table and tells me to take everything off and leave the opening in the front. This is when I started to get a bit snippy with him, really,it's a work physical already. I'm a nurse, not a construction worker, sign my flippin' papers so we can close the office, grab a bite to eat, then go back to my place and snuggle and watch some TV or something. His face started getting a little bit serious at this point and he again said, "opening in the front please." And out the exam door room he walked closing the door tightly behind him. A few minutes later he asked me to follow him out into the hallway. The gown was big enough so it covered everything it needed to cover. Next thing I knew, I was standing in front of an eye chart and reading that thing off to him and felt like an idiot, lol. Then we went around another little corner into the lab where he made me get up on his scales and measured my height. Then we turned around and looked at both the urine in the cup which he explained to me was 100 percent clear and clean for all narcotic or other various things they test drug abusers for. Then he took a few steps to the side where he had my urine dip stick laying out after it had been read. He held it up and asked me what it meant. There were a few things I could tell like it was full of red blood cells, and there were a few other things that I knew didn't look quite right but wasn't sure without comparing it to the bottle what it exactly meant, so I shrugged my head like I didn't know. He quickly answered me, "Well, it seems you have a raging UTI." And I said, "oh, I hadn't noticed." which was the truth actually.
So we walk back around the corner and into the other hallway and back in his exam room. He tells me to go ahead and get back up on the table. I am still keeping myself well covered. First thing he does is picks up my exam papers, raises an eyebrow, reaches in his drawer and pulls out his reflex hammer. I hadn't seen one of those in years. So he bangs around on me for a bit until he gets the results he needs, some are a bit sluggish, partly due to my thyroid condition I'm guessing, but basically were normal.
At this point I started heading back into on of my newly acquired hot flashes, got suddenly really thirsty, sweating, red faced, etc. He did a set of vitals, blood pressure, pulse, O2 sats, respiration, all were pretty normal,a few were slightly high for me because of my nervousness,but they were still in normal ranges. Then the games began my friends.
I watched him reach over open this glass jar full of tongue blades and remove one from the jar. Then he said, "open up please, I'm going to take a look in you mouth." I actually laughed at him at this point. First of all, NO ONE looks into my mouth, especially with either a tongue blade or a q-tip/applicator ever, and besides that my waves of severe nausea were starting to happen, so sticking something in my mouth that would for sure tickly my uvula would be a 100 percent guarantee for projectile emesis. But he kept insisting, he as smiling about it, but in a stern sort of "I'm not playing games here" sort of a way. I told him my story about why I don't like them, he stated he understood and again promised he would be gentle and not choke me. So I let him, and he was right, he didn't choke me, I will wanted to gag, but that wasn't his fault.
So, he fills out a few more of the papers my job sent him, turns those upside down in another pile and picks up another one and looks it over. He looked in my ears and my nose, (which I always hate because I always feel like I might have lots of buggers up there or something gross, lol), then he taps on my sinus cavities, then works his yummy fingers down my neck and palpates my thyroid glad and surrounding lymph nodes.
Next he pulled out the leg rest portion of the exam table and asked me to lay down so he could listen to and then palpate my abdomen. Given my current state of nausea at the moment, that was easier said than done, but I managed. He listened to all 4 quad's, which were all positive. Then he reached into my gown and palpated my liver, spleen, kidneys, bladder etc, but did so under the gown, but somehow managed to keep all naughty bits covered at all times. Which thinking back on it kind of makes me laugh because he is my boyfriend, lol. Him pushing and prodding on my belly made my nausea even worse. Apparently I was starting to look a little ashen, pale or green in color because Doc told me I wasn't looking real good. He then told me he was going to excuse himself so he could get me a bottle of water and a few other things. He returned in just a few moments with the bottle of water in hand. He offered me a hand to help me sit up more easily then opened the water for me. As I was taking a few slow and easy sips of my water Doc started asking me questions about various things, ultimately trying to establish the cause of the nausea. With the very recent kidney surgery I had just had, that could be the cause, could be the UTI, could be dehydration, flu, infection and a million different other things too. After a few minutes and a number of small sips of water, I did feel slightly better, not a lot, but didn't have that immediate feeling of impending vomit. Doc looked at me for a few seconds then asked me if I felt good enough to continue for a few minutes more then we would be done for the day, and we could do the rest of the exam either later that night or the following day when I was feeling better. I agreed to that. Because oddly enough, even though he wasn't asking me to be physical or exert myself, I was actually pretty tired.
Doc took the water from my hands and set it on the table. He then asked me to sit up nice and tall for him while he went and sat down on his little black rolly stool. He asked me to scoot up slightly closer to the end of the table. He leaned in then and looked me in the eye and said, "I am going to open your gown and start your beast exam. Then he asked me to lower my gown to my waste and put my hands on my hips and slightly lean into his direction. He looked at them head on, then to the left, then to the right, all for a few seconds. Then he asked me to pull my gown back up and scoot back on the table a bit, re-pulled out the foot rest and then assisted in helping me lay back down. He again told me that he was going to finish the breast exam with me laying down, it shouldn't hurt or be uncomfortable, but if so please let him know.
Now here comes the first little surprise. Doc has me laying down on the table, both breasts covered completely. Instead of opening my gown up and exposing the girls, he just reaches in under the gown and palpates that way. I gave him an odd look and I said, "sweetie, you can open that all the way you know, you've seem them before." He sort of looked down at me with this tiny little smile on his face and said, "Hon, I have my doctors hat on, you are my patient, only my patient." Okay I thought, me being naughty though I was going to really see how tight his doctors hat was on, so when he asked me to
put my left arm above my head and my right one down at my side, which was the side he was standing on needless to say, I took some initiative and started rubbing his penis through his pants while he was examining my left breast. Well let me tell you, that was not the smarted move on my part that was for sure and I NEVER did that again, lol.
Doc is almost always polite, always very professional, and he takes his job very seriously. The look on his face was not a very good one for sure. First of all, I think I embarrassed him a little bit, I also think I made him mad, mad because like I said, he takes his job very seriously and I think maybe he thought I was being disrespectful to him. Needless to say, he stepped back from the table a bit, finished his exam and washed his hands. As he was drying his hands, and I just knew because I could feel it, I had a lecture coming, and I was right. Again, Doc is always respectful, but he is assertive and he has this "doctors" voice that just makes you have to do things because he's the doctor and you are not sort of a voice if you know what I mean, lol. So he goes on to tell me that this is his office, he is a doctor, I am a patient, as a nurse you should know that medicine isn't a game. When I have my doctors hat on it's on tight and you touching me inapropriately is not acceptable behavior.
He sat back down on his stool and was finishing up writing on some of my forms for my new job. I asked him if I could get dressed and he said he wasn't quite that far done and he still had a few more things he needed to do before I could get dressed and go back to bed for a few hours before we went out to dinner if I still felt like going. I agreed. Doc again got up and left the room, this time he was gone a bit longer than before but not too long. I had no idea what he wanted to have me do next. Goodness only knows whats on the stupid forms from my new job.
He returned, shut the door completely, walked over and picked up one of the forms off the stack from my new job and told me to read the first few lines. The top line was date of birth, social security number address, and sex. All places were filled out. The second line was a line for all my vital signs, all of those were filled out except the temp, also beside temp were two other boxes to be marked, the top one said oral, and the second one said rectal. I kind of chuckled at that because it's been a long time since I have seen a physical form requesting a route for a temp. I looked over the rest of the paper which were a lot of check marks boxes and it looked to me like the entire paper was filled out. So I handed it back to him and said, "cool, thanks".
He half smiled back and said "welcome, so how's your nausea now. Any better, any worse?" And without thinking, I said, "well, it's not any better for sure, and actually I think it's getting worse. I need to just lay down and go to bed for a bit I think, then I will be okay.
I started to slide towards the end of the table to get off so I could get dressed and do exactly that, go home and go back to bed for a few hours. I was stopped cold in my tracts. Doc reached in his shirt pocked and pulled out a plastic case. I knew immediately what was in that plastic case....a rectal thermometer. I was suddenly frozen in time. He reached over and pulled a packet of lube out of the drawer. Doc opened the case and pulled out the thermometer and started shaking it down.
When I get nervous or afraid, I usually laugh, joke, or giggle, I am not sure which one I was doing, but I was doing one of them. His face didn't change one bit. I knew he was dead serious. I have had a few rectal temps previously in play situations by Doc himself, which were fun and exciting, but this was real, very real, and there was no way I was getting a rectal temp in a real situation, way too embarrassing.
The stare down started. "On your belly for me hon." He said with his cold stone doctor tone of voice and face.
"No way Doc". Then I continued to shake my head at him, which was actually making me more nauseated. But I continued to shake my head no all the while looking him right in the eyes the entire time.
He again said, "Come on now, on your belly." He also was keeping eye contact with me the entire time. Again he started shaking down the thermometer but this time was taking steps towards me.
Well, his tone of voice, his body language, all reeked of well deserved respect, knowledge, and medical appropriateness. We both knew as nauseated as I was and with it getting worse by the seconds, there was no way I would have been able to keep an oral thermometer in my mouth without an ememsis.
So, with his last few steps towards me, I knew I was beat and had lost this time. With a slightly bowed head, and a pretty red face I would imagine, this nurse turned over on the exam table on her belly, pulled up the gown and lowered her panties to about mid cheeks. When Doc turned back around from putting ample lube onto the tip of the thermometer Doc realized my panties were not quite low enough for a temp. So very gingerly after asking permission to lower them a few more inches, Doc very easily inserted my first truly medically warranted adult, and the first one I could ever remember, rectal thermometer. I was so embarrassed, I mean so embarrassed, while it was happening.
He pulled the thermometer out, and I don't remember exactly what it was,but I did have a fever. I started to again get off the table while he was washing off the thermometer and I heard that doctor voice again. "We're not quite done yet hon, couple more things to take care of, then you can go."
Then I started in on the whinny voice, "Like what now?"
Doc replied, "Well since you are already in position, I'm going to give you a shot of Zofran for your nausea, and then I'm giving you a gram of Rocephin, the first of three by the way for your UTI"
"Rocephin, uhh, grrr, Rocephin hurts too much."-very whinny reply
As Doc was opening the alcohol prep pads, he once again spoke up, and again in his 'there isn't going to be any arguing, this is for your own good' voice tone, he said, "Hon, you are less than a month post some pretty serious kidney surgery. Trust me when I tell you, the last thing you need right now is a UTI going untreated. And the nausea you are having is in relation to your kidney pain. Deep breath hon." Then I felt the first needle, slight burn, had to be the zofran, then immediately following a needle again and a very sharp hot burn, oh yes, that would me the rocephin. Total ouchy!
I love shots, and I love rectal temps, but when they are real they are totally different. I never new that until that day.
I really and honestly was very embarrassed that day, later my embarrassment turned into slight anger. Yes, I was mad at him for a bit but wasn't sure why. It took me a while to figure it out and the reason I came up with was because he was right the entire time and I knew it, and, I was also mad because he stood his ground and didn't let me bully him, not something I was ever used to. God love him for that. lol.
I will have to say this now though, looking back on it. That entire trip in his office that day was then, still is, and probably always will be the hottest real life doctors appointment/experience I have ever had. Hands down my friends, hands down!