Okay, okay, so I know I have skipped a few days. It's not because I didn't have anything to say. I just didn't have time to say it.
But I'm back now and if anyone out there is interested, I went to my re-scheduled doctor's appointment last Wednesday. That's right--I went back to see the doctor who went home and left me in the examining room.
I wasn't kidding about taking a sign with me. I took two pieces of card stock, taped them together, then took a red Sharpie and in block letters wrote, "PLEASE DON'T FORGET ME, DR. XXXXX!" I had some star stickers in all different colors from my writing workshops for the kids at the local grade school and I put them all over the poster. Then I curled long sections of gold ribbon and stapled them to the four corners of the sign. I wanted to make dang sure he didn't miss it.
I folded the sign in half so no one could see what was written on it and took my shaven legs to his office. They took me back to the examining room pretty quickly. I noticed the nurse (a different one than last time) shooting glances at the ribbony papers in my hand, but she didn't ask. She weighed me and took my blood pressure and pulse, commenting that both my blood pressure and pulse were high for me ( I wonder why?? Perhaps worries that the doctor would rip down the sign, stomp on it, curse me out, and then banish me from his practice?). She said the doctor would probably want to re-check them when he came in. Then she asked me why I was there and I told her it was all written in the chart already since I'd been in the week before and never got checked. She looked up and said, "Oh, that was you?" I nodded and as she went out the door, she said, "The doctor will be in shortly and I'll make sure he actually comes in this time."
As soon as she closed the door, I jumped up and opened it again, sticking the sign to the outside of the door (I had thought ahead and put tape on the back of the card stock). Then I closed it and waited, my blood pressure and pulse probably doubling. It didn't take long. I heard a shriek and then a laugh, then, "Oh, my God, that is the funniest thing I've ever seen." Then, "Sheila, Sheila, come here. You have to see this." Sheila ended up being the nurse who had taken care of me at the previous appointment. Sheila laughed and made comments about how funny it was, then opened the door and stuck her head in. "I can't believe you did that," she said, laughing. "That is great. He has been obsessing all week about leaving you in here. He asks me every single morning, 'When is Mrs. D coming back?' and I keep telling him Wednesday. Then today he said, 'She's coming today, right? Make sure I don't keep her waiting' as if I can rush him. I can't wait to see his face when he sees this."
A parade of people were called back by the nurse to see the sign, including other nurses, office staff, and a few of the other doctors in the practice. One of the doctors stuck her head in and said to make sure to get a picture of my doctor next to the sign. Apparently, the whole office had been giving my doctor a bit of a hard time about leaving me stranded. I could hear my doctor in the examining room next to mine and I just sat, holding my Kindle and waiting.
I heard him come out of the other room and ask the people who were milling around waiting to see his reaction, "Okay, what are you setting me up for?" They all murmured things like, "What? Nothing. What could you possibly mean?" and he said, "I could hear you out here and I heard you say 'Did he see it yet?' and 'I can't wait to see his reaction', so I know something is up. What is it?" They just shook their heads and said, "Don't know what you're talking about." He gave up and turned toward my examining room door and ----HUGE belly laugh. I could hear the other people laughing with him and he said, "That's amazing. That's just amazing." The door opened and as he stepped in, I held up my Kindle and asked, "Would you mind coming back later? I just want to finish this chapter." He laughed and said, "After what I did to you last week, you can finish the whole book and I'll still be waiting patiently to examine you when you're done."
He apologized, said he felt just awful, and said that he was glad it was me because I was such a good sport. Most of his other patients, he confessed, would have gone through the roof if it had happened to them and he didn't think he would have handled it well if he had been the one left waiting. He also said he had finally stopped blushing about it and now the blush was back (Mission Accomplished!). He took my pulse and blood pressure, which were back to their normal-for-me low readings. He laughingly complained, "Great, the lowest point in my professional career and now I get to relive it." I replied, "Wait until you read about it on my blog."
We did the whole exam thingy (kind of a let-down after all the other stuff) and when he was finished, he said, "I have to get that sign down before any of my other patients see it and start asking questions." I told him I wanted a picture of him with it and he replied, "No way," before walking away with the sign. He called back over his shoulder, "I'm putting this over my desk in my private office where no one will see it except me." (So you can blame him for the fact that there isn't a picture of it attached to this post, although a thinking person would have taken a picture of it before leaving for the doctor's office--whoops.)
So is all forgiven and forgotten? Are Doctor X and I even? No way. Because he then sent in the nurse with a big needle full of whooping cough vaccine to shoot in my muscle (she waited until after the shot was finished before warning me that my arm was going to be sore for a couple of days) AND he gave her a slip for me to schedule a colonoscopy. A colonoscopy?? Isn't that kind of harsh payback for a little sign on the door??
No worries. I have six months before my next appointment. Plenty of time to plan my retaliation.
P.S. As the nurse was leaving, she said because of my sign, I was now a "rock star" in the office. If I'd known that was all it took to achieve rock star status, I would have brought in signs insulting the doctor years ago.
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