Anyone ever have an unexpected physical exam?

When I was in college, I had what I thought was a minor health issue (a swollen gland in my neck) but it did not go away for a couple of weeks. My girlfriend made me go to the student medical center to have it checked out I saw a young doctor there who didn't do any exam other than ask me some questions and look at the swollen spot on my neck. He thought that it was probably not anything to worry about but he wasn't sure. So he referred me to an internist who had an office off campus and who had agreed to accept referrals of students and charge the university medical center. I wasn't expecting to see another doctor and wasn't sure what an internist was. I took the referral slip with the internist's phone number and, after my next class, called his office to see when I could get an appointment.

I was surprised when the internist's receptionist told me that the doctor had an open appointment time that afternoon. I still had two more classes but the time that she offered me was after those. She told me that the doctor needed about an hour for his first-time patient appointments so I was wondering why that was.

I arrived at the internist's small office a few blocks from the campus and the small waiting room was empty, except for me. After checking in with the receptionist, I waited a few minutes before the doctor opened a door and greeted me. He took me back to an exam room. I didn't expect more to happen than had happened at the student medical center but I wasn't nervous about seeing this doctor at all. He asked me a lot of questions about my medical history, my family medical history and some about the swollen gland in my neck. I was surprised about the questions but figured that I couldn't have anything seriously wrong with me at age 20.

Then I did get a surprise. The internist told me that he needed to do an exam and pulled out one of those exam gowns from a drawer underneath the exam table. He told me to take everything off and put the gown on. I remember him saying, "Undress completely including your underwear and socks and put the gown on with the open part in the back". He said that he would be back in the room in a minute and that, once I was changed, I should have a seat on the exam table. I was shocked to be getting an exam and having to change into a gown but I hurriedly stripped down and put the gown on to cover my front. I was worried that he might come back in the exam room while I was changing and I had trouble figuring out how to tie the gown in the back because I had never worn a gown for an exam before. I got the top tie done at the back of my neck but not the middle tie. I sat up on the table and waited for a minute or two until the doctor came back in the room. I had left all my clothes piled on a chair and wondered whether I should have hung my shirt and jeans on a hook somewhere.

The internist started with my head and neck and checked out the lump in my neck. He checked my eyes, ears, nose and neck and then lowered the top half of the gown to my waist so he could listen to my heart and lungs. When he put his stethoscope on my back, I was thinking that my bare rear was showing. Then the doctor had me lie down on my back on the table and pushed on my stomach and tapped my chest. He then covered my top half with the gown and lifted the lower half up so that it was now lying on my chest and my bottom half was exposed. He checked my feet and legs and then around my groin. He didn't check me for a hernia in the usual way. He just moved my weiner out of the way and felt my balls while I was still lying on my back.

Then the internist pulled the gown back down over my lower half and asked me to sit up slowly and retry the gown tie at my neck. He asked me to get off of the table. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. Once I was standing in front of him, the doctor told me to turn around and face the table. Then he told me to bend over the table and put my chest on it. I did as he said and was self-conscious that the gown was open in the back and my butt was totally exposed as I bent over the table. He told me that he needed to check my rear. I thought that he meant that he was going to look, but he put on one of those exam gloves and put some lubrication on it. I was watching him as he did this at a small counter near the head of the exam table. He came back to me and inserted his very large finger in my rear. I was totally shocked to have this done for the first time. He felt around and I had a feeling like I was going to pee but I didn't. When he pulled his finger out, he told me to sit back on the exam table. I am sure that I had a red face from embarrassment but he didn't seem to notice. He told me that he would see me again in two days but that he wanted to run some blood tests first and that the nurse would be right in.

He sent the nurse in to draw some blood from me while I was still in the gown. When she was finished, she told me that I could get dressed. I got out of the gown and put my clothes back on and left his office.

When I got back to my apartment, my girlfriend was there and wanted to know what happened. I told her that I had seen the internist and that he had done an exam, but that I did not know yet what he thought. She was curious about what happened at the doctor's office but I didn't tell her the whole story because I was really embarrassed. I was nervous about telling her about the whole thing even though I thought that my exam was more like what she experienced during her checkups. I think that she guessed that I had had a very thorough exam. Her dad was a doctor in her hometown so she knew alot about medical exams and wanted to go to medical school. She kept bringing up the subject of my doctor visit over the next week or two and I know that she talked to her dad about my situation once on the phone. Gradually, I told her more, especially about being totally surprised to get a full exam for the first time.

I saw the doctor a couple of days after this first visit and he thought that my swollen neck was just a minor infection and gave me an antibiotic cream to put on it. I was fine in a week.