I’ve recently been trying harder to get published again, which caused me to dive back into the old archive of drafts from my writing sprint a couple years ago. I know it may seem hard to imagine for any of you who have read my blog or my satire before, but they are almost one in the same. 99% of my humor pieces are based on real life scenarios and I write it in my own voice. Sometimes I look back at a draft I wrote and realize I don’t want to make something more fictional or satirical, I want to just tell it like it is…ya know, funny cuz it’s TRUE! So here’s a list of all the crazy shit medical professionals have actually said out loud to me, which may or may not be the crux of my distrust in doctors and my severe anxious attachment to self-diagnosing on WebMD.

*For the last three years I’ve churned out a birthday blog as a mechanism to fight the sads on aging. I felt like I got it all out last year (I should’ve for how long that blog was), so pls accept this unrelated blog that I was planning on posting anyway as my “birthday blog.” Realistically, when you get older, your body starts deteriorating and if you keep reading you’ll see that mine has been doing so since birth so I guess it’s still on theme. I’m actually terrified for what my later years will bring with medical care, but at least I made it to 33 without crumbling into dust. And that’s certainly worth celebrating!

In Chronological Order

Oops, let me just check where the sun don’t shine! Hot start, I know. The most important thing I learned growing up didn’t come from a textbook, it came from my childhood dermatologist repeatedly checking my butthole for moles. As it turns out, moles don’t come from the sun, and they CAN thrive in dark cracks. For whatever reason the first derm I had was obsessed with diving into my butt (not just mine, I double checked with my sister and she got the same scarring peek so it’s comforting to know I wasn’t being violated alone) and I’ve seen roughly 45 derms since this one and none of them have ever once parted my buttcheeks looking for cancerous moles. But one *did* have the balls to tell me that I had age spots near my vagina that often appear around age 30. 😑 I was 27 at the time. Even if I didn’t already have a complex about aging, THAT WOULD’VE DONE IT!

*Pulls saturated glove out from armpit* Well, you definitely have a sweating problem. Gee doc, my pit stains down to my ankles on a Tuesday in the middle of February might’ve indicated that or maybe it’s the fact that all the other 7th graders chant “SWASS” repeatedly when I walk into the cafeteria with a moist butt print on my terrycloth mini. JK they didn’t do that. But I have photographic proof that on the 8th grade field trip to Cleveland, OH, my tee shirt was soaked and discolored as I tried to flirt with a boy and sit on his lap while my Secret Light & Fresh wasn’t hacking it and I absolutely had BO and HONESTLY THAT’S PROBABLY WHY I DIDN’T HAVE A BOYFRIEND UNTIL 25. (I spent about 2 hours trying to find this picture and of course I can’t. But one day, when you least expect it, I’ll resurface it for gigglez.)

Also, I leaked in 7th grade during a visit from Aunt Flo and I WAS wearing a terrycloth mini and I didn’t think anything of it being wet because that was just an average day for me in my teens and therefore I went all day walking around with a giant seat-print blood stain on my skirt. The moral of the story is that all of this could’ve been solved if my mom agreed to let the dermatologist stick me with botox to block my sweat glands on this fateful day and instead she said I was too young and ruined my life. I’m even more bitter now because as a grown ass adult I still can’t afford botox and I have to buy new white shirts every quarter to replace the ones with browned armpits because I still pour sweat out of all of my orifices on the daily double. Even when I’m cold. #HyperhidrosisSurvivor

I need an even smaller speculum because you’ve got an itty bitty vagina. As if going to the gynecologist for the first time at 15 isn’t traumatizing enough, let’s add in a doc telling me to keep my American Eagle distressed jean skirt intact and just slide my undies off, which felt like something a horny teen would say as we snuggled under a blanket in his basement watching a scary movie. She then proceeded to conduct a full pap smear on a girl who had never even kissed a boy. Spoiler alert: even the small speculum feels like you’re being cranked open with a car jack and your hymen is being ripped out by a gloved hand. As adorable as it may sound, having an “itty bitty vagina” made my annual invasion a straight up lady bits massacre from ages 15-present day.

The trick is to pant like a dog and you won’t even feel me swab your throat. One would think a reference to a strep throat cult was from my early childhood but curveball, this was told to me when I was 23. Yes, that’s right. You heard it here first. I was a college graduate before I stopped hitting doctors and screaming when they tried to swab my throat. All it took was for a very skilled ninja in the Urgent Care to not judge me and to give me this pro tip so I didn’t feel like I was choking to death. I mean, realistically I could make dolphin sounds and clap my fins and I will STILL FEEL that giant wooden paddle piercing my hangy ball with reckless abandon causing me to gag uncontrollably. But this was the one and only time I didn’t badger the doctor administering the strep test. I also didn’t have strep, I had mono and because they couldn’t diagnose it for several visits, I turned into a lifeless corpse that eventually needed a Sammy Sosa dose of roids to bring me back to life.

Sounds like your boyfriend has multiple personality disorder. This sentence was uttered by a licensed mental health counselor about 20 mins into my first therapy appointment after giving a brief description of my boyfriend. That’s right, folks, this is someone who has years of schooling and certifications to help people through their darkest times and she’s tossing out a diagnosis for someone she’s never even met after two sentences from someone she *just* met. YIKES THAT IS SCARY. What’s scarier is that she ended the appointment by saying that she saw my reaction when she said that and wanted to walk it back, because therapy is just guessing and seeing what resonates. What’s scariest is that I continued to see her for several months and even brought my boyfriend in for an appointment because she asked to meet him and then she flirted with him for 40 minutes and told me to never let him get away. YOU CAN HAVE HIM, DONNA!

*Feels ice cold toes * Not much I can do for this, your best bet is to move down to Florida where it’s much warmer! So then it IS true what the brochures say, Florida is known as the Circulation state! Add my Raynaud’s Syndrome (freezing cold fingers and toes), to the laundry list of ailments that get worse as I age. Apparently I have my Nana to thank for passing the ole dead toes on down to me in the genetics pool. Ironically enough, her toes are dead as is the rest of her and has been since long before I was layering two pairs of socks to sleep at night in the winter. I can also thank my family for settling in the frozen tundra of Syracuse, which certainly hasn’t helped matters. But sure, as I put a space heater on my feet, invest in wool socks and wear Uggs everywhere, it certainly hadn’t crossed my mind that FLORIDA WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS ICY HELLHOLE.

*Lifts shirt* You were the one with the abnormal mole, THAT’s right. You’ll just feel a pinch. Why do drugs when you can get simple thrills just from getting your back sliced and stitched up with the exam room door wide open and wonder if they figured out which patient you are yet. Puff puff pass or back alley biopsy, amirite?! This was hands down the sketchiest/most unprofessional experience I’ve ever had in a medical office. These clowns pulled up topless pictures of other patients on their double monitor computers in front of me (of course it was the oldest man on this earth, they couldn’t even treat me to a hot bod), complained about their jobs, bitched about other patients, scraped my back for a biopsy and let it bleed all over my white shirt, had me sign a waiver minutes before surgery on my own lap and took the pages with the actual info on it and told me just to Johnny Hancock the sig page, then conducted the surgery with the door wide open and my shirt off, chatting amongst themselves as they tried to figure out which patient I actually was mid-slice. And then I had to go back and have the stitches ripped from my body (also with the door open.) That was three total appointments from a place that was about as legit as a medic tent at Fyre Fest. So natch when they sent me a “HOW DID WE DO” survey, I lit them up. Don’t ask if you don’t want the answer, boneheads! As you might recall-in my 31st Birthday Blog, I googled how to report them as well. I hope someone far richer than me has sued the ever-loving shit out of them by now. That’s my birthday wish this year.

Has your nipple always looked like that? Ya, doc. I’ve been coming here annually for 3 years now and you ask me this exact question every time and instead of roasting the left nip I was born with and suggesting it could be a sign of breast cancer, maybe you could just make a fucking note in my chart. Another dermatologist. Go figure.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have been mostly traumatized (and tan-shamed) by dermatologists. BUT my most surprising violation (with very little verbal warning) came from my viz to the GI, which I detailed extensively here. In addition, of course, to the all-time classic, “you’ve been pooping wrong,” which belongs on this list right alongside the jarring buhhole examination. A two-for-one special of reasons to be in therapy from that Doc.

Your feet aren’t that bad, imagine what I see in Newark. Honestly, this was meant to be a comforting statement from my favorite doc I have, my podiatrist. He’s an old-school Italian, baseball lovin guy who takes care of me as if I’m his own daughter (including putting my shoes on at the end of each appointment and tying the laces for me, double knot style.) Most people would be irritated by this but I actually love being treated like a toddler when I visit him quarterly. Keeps me young, which I know I am anyway because judging by his waiting room, I am 50 years younger than any of his patients. But anyway, when your sister is telling you that you can’t come home for the 4th of July unless you wear socks at all times because she doesn’t want to puke at the sight of your toenail that LITERALLY WILL NEVER HEAL (it’s almost a full year later and we’re still rocking a very unappealing toe), hearing that the mangled dusty-ass tootsies of Newark are even being mentioned in the same sentence as yours is not very uplifting. Especially because HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PULL IN FEET PIC MONEY IF MY FEET ARE HORRIFYING. My right big toe, AKA Moldy Toe looks like what I imagine a 95 year old woman’s crusty chunky toenail looks like and for several months of sandal season, Doc told me I couldn’t put nail polish over it to cover it up. And I told him that if I was ever going to find a husband we’d have to find a solution that wasn’t flaunting this bad boy around bare in a pair of flops. So yea, the bar is low as I wait for this thing to die away from me but at least it’s not STREETS OF NEWARK low.

PS The sad faced hospital gown cover photo wasn’t from any of these circumstances but was from a dermatologist who forgot about me waiting in the exam room in a paper gown one day. Doesn’t make the cut because they didn’t say anything questionable…they didn’t even remember I existed. My mom told them they were all dead to us and we stormed out of there and never turned back. I know, I know, ANOTHER DERMATOLOGIST. And while we’re on the topic of the most traumatizing type of doctor, I just want it in writing that I’m a FIRM believer in them scraping a mole every year strictly to say they did something. There has not been one single time that I’ve been examined by a derm and they haven’t said hm, this one looks a little iffy, let me just send a piece of it to the lab. Sure, doc. You go ahead and take a souv from my skin so you can charge me (and my insurance…if I happen to have any at the time) an extra lab testing/needles/numbing injection fee. WITHOUT FAIL. It’s like paying the toll at the dermatologist. Which reminds me, I’m due for payment in a couple months…I wonder where I’ll be hacked this time.