Last week I had both my head and my cervix examined. One was tilted slightly to one side and the other wasn’t screwed on tight. So, basically, the same ol’, same ol’.
It was a coincidence I went to both my shrink and my gynecologist on the same day. I only see my therapist when I need a tune-up every few years. With my gyno, however, it’s once a year every year. Like clockwork actually. You see, he and were born in the same month of the same year, so we celebrate our birthdays with a pap smear. I toss some confetti on my nether regions and he warms the speculum over the appropriate number of candles.
I’ve been going to the same guy (yes, I still go to a male gynecologist, but it’s okay, he’s Czechoslovakian) for almost a decade. While I was lying there with my feet in the stirrups, opening my birthday chocolate, I thought about how the whole process is different now that I’m over 50.
It starts out in the waiting area where all the baby magazines scattered on the tables no longer scare me. Now that I’m menopausal, I don’t have to scan through the baby names just in case. Which is good because I’m pretty sure a girl named Pinot Gris would probably be teased mercilessly. And when I see all the pregnant women traipsing in and out of the doors, I don’t get jealous. I smile quietly, thankful that at least my mood swings won’t last eighteen years.
Then when I get in the doctor’s office, the best part of the whole visit happens – I no longer have to remember when my last period was and how long it lasted. This is a real load off, considering my brain is already overloaded with the lyrics to every song from the 60s and 70s. “Singing bye-bye ice cream and pie, walked four miles on the treadmill to keep you off my thighs…” Okay, maybe those aren’t the lyrics you remember, but they work for me.
Not only don’t I have to remember the date of my last period, my gyno has it in the computer and can pull it up himself! August 12, 2007.
My visits are a lot less stressful in many ways these days. For example, it doesn’t cross my mind anymore to flirt while I’m on the table. Because at this point in our relationship, he and I are like an old married couple. I know exactly what he’s going to do before he does it, so the mystery is gone. And when he asks how often I’m having sex and I tell him three times in the last six months, rather than feeling like I’m letting down my gender by bringing their average down, doc gives me a big thumbs up. That’s a real ego boost, you betcha!
There are a few things that happen during my annual visit now that I’m over fifty that I’m not that happy about. He always reminds me that I should have had a colonoscopy in the past year. And I tell him, when they give them out for free at Jiffy Lube, I’ll be first in line. And we do talk a lot more about moisture than I’m really comfortable with. But all in all, gotta say like fine wine, my gyno visits have gotten better with age. Especially now that I drink a bottle of the stuff before hopping up on the table.
