Annual

But in my case, it hasn’t been annual. (If you don’t know what I mean by annual, you must be a guy…or a young girl.) No. I’m one of the lucky ones who had an abnormal result last year, so I’ve been going every six months. April 2002. November 2002. And now May 2003. Ugh. However, if my result is normal this time around, I’ll be back on an annual schedule. (Yay?)

There are few things that can make worse the experience of being completely in the buff, with only a paper “cape” on top and a paper “drape” on the bottom and with one’s legs splayed for the world to see. I, however, was fortunate enough to discover one of them.

As I’m laying there, trying to think of anything else, the doctor, in position, found that the light she’d been planning to use to reveal my secrets to her wasn’t working. Her first thought was that the electrical outlet on the table wasn’t working. So, she navigated around my leg to the wall, to try another outlet, to no avail. The light was dead. She finally pulled a floor lamp over — one of those with a moveable head and “neck”. That maneuver required her to launch herself over my leg to wrestle the behemoth closer, and position it just right.

Even worse, she remembered that it was me last year who had come in for a colposcopy and the light on the scope had shorted out.