Now I can add “visits to the gyno’s office” to the list of things I detest (along with rollercoasters, wet socks, airplanes, and black licorice).

I went for a check up yesterday because I hadn’t been to the doctor in two years and my roommate told me that women our age our supposed to go every six months.

But trying to wrangle a doctor’s appointment in Manhattan is like trying to reserve a table at Babbo. The phone lines are always busy and the earliest reservation isn’t until November. I finally snagged an appointment but the receptionist asked if I cared that the doctor was a man. I said no. I asked how old. She said 70.

Okay, I have no problem with a seventy year old grandfather examining my lotus blossom. But how was I supposed to ask him for free samples of contraceptives without breaking into raucous laughter?

I arrive at the doctor’s office. It is a typical waiting room with the obligatory paintings of fruit in a bowl, pamphlets advertising birth control pills, and brochures with geriatric women extolling the benefits of ky jelly.

There is a hodge podge of women sitting in the waiting area. There’s an elderly woman who cannot stop staring at me, a robust looking Caribbean woman, and an older Southern woman with a blazer the color of passion fruit margarita.

The nurse calls me in and tells me to sit in the doctor’s private office for a brief meeting before the exam. The doctor enters and he has deep creases on his forehead as if someone had been using his face to play scrabble for the past thirty years.

The first thing out of his mouth, “You must be Chinese.” I correct him, “No, I’m Korean.”

He says, “I know a phrase in Chinese: Konichiwa.”

I don’t have the heart to tell a seventy year old medical professional about to embark on my pelvic region that konichiwa is actually Japanese not Chinese.

He asks me when I had my last period. I tell him that I’m pretty irregular.

He says, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. They may be embarrassing.” I answer, “Okaaay.”

“Have you ever had surgery?”
“No.”
“Are you sexually active?”
“Um…yeaaaah.”
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
“Not to my knowledge…hahahaha….er...um…no”
“Do you consider yourself a hairy person?”
“Whaaa? Um….I don’t think so…”
“Do you have hair on your upper lip?”
“Um, no.”
“Do you ever shave your upper lip?”
“Well, I have to wax every now and then…who doesn’t?”
He scribbles away.
“Do you have hair on your nipples?”
“Um….no!”
“Do you have to shave the hair on your stomach?”
“No.”

After he interrogates me about my hirsuteness, he tells me that he wants to take some blood tests because I may have an excessive amount of testosterone. Me? Testosterone? How is that possible? I cry during those “diamonds are forever” commercials and I watch an excessive amount of the Food Network. I don’t play sports. I like to wear dresses and heels. And I think the movie Fight Club has too many fight scenes. How could I have too much testosterone???

We go to the examining room, the nurse takes my blood, and then asks me to take my clothes off and put on a robe.

The doctor enters and begins his examination.

He asks, “Do you wax or shave because you have a profuse amount of hair down here or because it is part of the current trend?”

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! IS THIS OLD MAN FOR REAL?!?!

“Um, I guess option b?”

He examines me for a couple of more minutes and I try to think of happy thoughts like chocolate eclairs and dalmatian puppies and try to ignore the fact that there is a seventy year old man inspecting me like a plumber.

“Okay, get dressed,” he says, “And meet me back in my office.”

I rapidly dress and hobble back to his office.

“I think you have polycystic ovarian disease. Come back in a week for a sonogram. For now, I’m going to prescribe you some birth control pills which will regulate your period.”

“Um, I’m sorry…what is polycystic ovarian…whatever?”

He then gives me this monologue about how my ovaries are not releasing ovum (ova?) and that this mainly afflicts women of Mediterranean heritage and it is very rare for Asian women to have this disease so there may have been some crossbreeding in my family.

“So then we won’t really know until we verify it with a sonogram, right?”
“No, I’m pretty sure you have it.”
“Well, then I guess I shouldn’t have to worry unless we find out it’s serious?”
“It’s serious.”
“Oh. Will I still be able to have children?”
“Are you and your husband planning to have children? We can discuss fertility treatments later.”
“Oh, no, I’m not married. I don’t even have a boyfriend…I just….I was just thinking I might want kids, you know, eventually…I mean, will I still be able to have kids?”
“You will have a less chance of having children than other women.”
“Oh.”

He then speaks into his tape recorder and mumbles some medical jargon about my cervix and lazy ovaries.

I admit I was a little thrown off by his diagnosis. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t have the herps or anything and then this grandpa is telling me that I may have trouble conceiving children?

But obviously I’m not going to worry until I get the test results. It’s not like I have hostile ovaries, they just like to take mini vacations every now and then. And I’m definitely getting a second opinion. I’m not sure if I can rely on medical advice from a man who thinks all Asian people look and talk the same.

*The title is a nod to Tucker Max, the original drunken Jinius.