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So I go to my 6 month check up with the oncologist. He’s been my doctor for years. Nice guy who gets me. I am in the exam room when a strange doctor comes in and out of my mouth flies: “Who the hell are you?” SNAP! Dr. Young-Thing proceeds to tell me he is a resident (oh crap), and that he is going to examine me. Like a deer in headlights, I say, “Like hell you are…where is Dr. S?”

I thought for sure he was going to push some hidden button for non-compliant patients. But he sits down and pulls up my chart online. Dr I-Have-Tattoos-Older Than-You proceeds to overview my ENTIRE medical history with me. We are talking 7 years.

“So you had cancer in 2005?”

I’m thinking: Noooooo, it was 2003 superstar, now get me the real doctor and do your fancy learnin’ on someone else.

“I am going to examine you–is that okay?”

To which I say, “No, not really, but I will let you see the magic that is my mastectomy!”

Oh, I was in rare form. (undoubtedly precipitated by a phone call with my parents not ten minutes earlier that mimicked Terms of Endearment–where I was ready to go Shirley MacClain on my dad’s sorry ass—”Get My Mom the medicine NOW!)

Dr Young thing: “I am feeling for your spleen, don’t find it.”

Me: “Wow, you need to study more.”

Dr. YT is fairly flustered by this point and steps out–leaving me the keys to the kingdom– My personal files online, for me to read! AHHH yeaaaaa! You know I did, kids. I sat right down and scrolled through that puppy like I was on a shopping spree at eBay. Okay, you ready…Here it is…the undeniably recorded in history and for all of UCLA and the world at large to read as a description of me as written by a my oncologist:

“This is a pleasant lady, alert and oriented x4, in no acute distress”

A resounding endorsement for Zoloft if I have ever heard one.

By then my real doctor, the author of my epitaph, comes in. I tried really hard to be “pleasant, alert, oriented x4 (not sure what the highest possible score is, but I am optimistic). Now, he has passed several of my is-this-doctor-a-dipwad litmus tests and so he is familiar with my work as a pain in the ass patient! He does his thing, and I tell him they should tell folks before they send a resident in to a patient.

He asks, “Why?”

“Because I had cancer, have no boobs, and a right to choose who looks at the train wreck that I call a body, reads my history, and for that matter is in the same room with me.”

I think I lost points for “pleasant lady…”

But then I look up at Dr Young Thing, and see his name tag. “Dr. Krishna” to which I said, “man, not much pressure with that name, huh?” They both started laughing so I think I got some points back for pleasantness.

The best…and I did this for all of you…is when I left.  I  saw yet another Dr. Young Thing  standing in the back office. He was beyond GORGEOUS! I said to the whole staff, “I will have him as my resident next time, thanks”.  Could have heard a pin drop…

Love to all of you pleasant, alert, and oriented x4 women out there who are only occasionally in acute distress…

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