Hi all! This one’s mine. I found out when calling to confirm the annaul physical I’d set up with my original OBGYN (well in advance) that it was cancelled and her schedule was booked up for months. I’d planned to have my birth control prescription renewed at that appointment, as usual, but now I couldn’t do that, and the refills were running out that month.

So, I was left having to search for a new OBGYN in my town with no idea who would be a good match for me. I ended up picking her out of the yellow pages (this was the mid-90s, so no websites yet to find positive/negative MD ratings) because she accepted my insurance and could see me right away. I soon found out why her patient load was so accommodating to a new patient appointment that fast.

It was 90+ degrees outside and what felt like 1000% humidity…a typical August in my part of the Midwest…and when I arrived at her office, the AC was out and this was in a medical center where the windows don’t open. So, it was like a steam room in there. I would have just left and rescheduled, but my prescription was running out, and I needed to get it filled asap. (Makes ya long to live in countries where you don’t need a pelvic exam/PAP test to get a darn BC prescription!) So, I stayed and dealt with it.

I met the doctor, who it turns out was from Korea, and she had a very heavy accent, which didn’t bother me as I’m very patient with people for whom English is their second language. I studied outside the U.S. and appreciated it when people were patient with me. We sat in her office to take my history, and as we were talking, I made sure to listen carefully and speak clearly, but she asked me to repeat myself over and over. I ended up having to simplify my answers to questions about my medical history for her to understand me.

I know…BIG red flag! But seeing as I was young and stupid, and didn’t really have a choice but to continue if I wanted my BC prescription, I stayed and toughed it out. Then came the physical exam. I got into the stupid paper gown and lap drape, endured the breast and bimanual exams as I sweated buckets and the paper below me stuck to my whole body.

Then came the speculum part. Now, I know especially when using a metal one, it’s best to either put it under some warm running water or let it sit in a dish of warm water so it isn’t ice cold. And I’d appreciated that in the past with other doctors. But this idiot must have had that thing sitting in a pot of boiling water on the stove for an hour, because as she inserted it, it felt like she’d just stuck a hot poker into me!!! My vagina was being seared by that damn thing, and I discovered that when this happens, your brain pretty much shuts down for a minute or so. All I could get out of my mouth was, “Hot…hot…IT’S HOT!!!” in an escalating panicked voice. That’s when I heard this, “Yeah, yeah…real hot in here. Air conditioning’s broken!” from beyond the paper drape. And she just continued with the exam. She was so clueless and her English comprehension was so bad that she had no idea she’d hurt me!

I know some might say, “I’d have kicked her in the face!” and I wanted to, but when you’ve got a searing-hot piece of metal stuck up your hoo-ha, any movement just makes it worse. And since she didn’t understand me anyway, I knew it would do no good to say anything else. I just tried to remember how to breathe and remained as still as possible until she removed it. The whole ride home, I just cried from the pain. If I’d known whom to call to have her license revoked, I’d have done it (again, no Internet to search), but at that point, I just wanted to never see that moronic woman’s face again. Learned a BIG lesson that day about trusting my instincts!

I just wish I’d been old/wise enough to go to another OBGYN to be checked for injury and then taken the results to a lawyer to sue for malpractice. (I just HATE people who jump up and sue for ridiculous things, but I think it was justified in this case.) But I was young and naive.

I can laugh about this today, since really is absurd, and people always crack up at that one-liner. If anyone asks me today if I’ve ever had a bad experience with an OBGYN, I say “Yeah, I ended up getting burned by one a while back.” They reply, “What did she do?” And I answer, “I got burned…no, seriously, she BURNED me!”