Visiting an Italian Gynecologist

I know plenty of people who steer clear of the doctor’s office at almost any price. I’m not one of them. If my usual arsenal of pain relievers or whatever else I have stashed away isn’t doing the trick, I’m on the phone to the doc’s office, where the nurses often know me by name. Several of my girlfriends are not only not interested in going to the regular doctor’s office, however, they get anxiety attacks about their annual visit to the gynecologist. Needless to say, I didn’t pass along this expat’s experience with the gyno in Italy:

The nurse walked ahead of me through a short corridor then ending up… with us in the operating room.

She pointed at a chair – a plain chair, nothing special about it. Brown plastic without armrests. “Get undressed. Pants, socks, underwear. Put these on your feet and this on your head.”

She handed me a sea-foam green cap that I normally associate with all those ER-type shows and I thought, right, we’re in an operating room. In her hand there were also two long forest-green bootie-type things that came up to my knees when I put them on.

Luckily that day I didn’t have a baby tee on or a tank top as it was summer, and I was able to cover a few more millimeters of skin. But what shirt can really cover everything??

I assure you, the description is funny… But really, it’s the artist’s rendering of what she looked like in the above-referenced getup that really tickled me. Of course, the fact that I laughed at all of this means that someday I, too, will have to suffer such indignities. I’m not so sure I’d tell y’all about it, though.