My annual physical torture exam was yesterday, and it once more confirmed my opinion about the 10 worst things about this yearly appointment.
10. When the mammographer says, “This will hurt a little,” she is lying. It hurts a lot.
9. Breathing is impossible while in the vise grip of the mammography machine, and the command “Don’t breathe” is like salt in the wound.
8. Being weighed in the hallway without being given a paper bag to put on one’s head.
7. Those paper gowns that don’t cover what needs covering and aren’t absorbent enough to soak up flop sweat.
6. Sitting on the exam table in a little paper gown soaked in flop sweat, paging through the magazine you smuggled in from the waiting room, and being one paragraph from the end of a really good article when the doctor walks in.
5. Every evidence of the niggling condition that’s been bothering you for a month and you didn’t make an appointment for because your physical was coming up, disappears when the doctor arrives.
4. Your bad breath, compliments of fasting in preparation for blood work, blasts you and the doc when he tells you to say ahhh.
3. Blood draws.
2. Flu shot.
1. Because you are almost 60, neither the person who draws your blood or the shot nurse offers you a princess Bandaid to cover your owies.
What do you like least about your annual physical? Leave a comment.
