I have a thing about male medical practitioners, whether they're the family doctor or podiatrists. My dad thinks it's hilarious that even my vet is female, but my predilections have been influenced by such awkward incidents as the time my last male gynae asked me if I was going away in December. It was March. While I appreciated the attempt at small talk designed to put me at ease, the fact remained that, when you're the kind of person who exits rooms backwards so that your husband of four years cannot see your bum, you're never going to feel okay about being peeked at by a stranger.
There have been other uncomfortable instance along the way, like the time I went to interview a gastroenterologist about future medical developments. I was pregnant at the time, which turned out to work against me when he led our conversation onto the topic new treatments for hemorrhoids. "Looking at you now, being pregnant, I'd say you're probably suffering," he said cheerfully. I wasn't - but knowing that was the first thought that came into his head when he looked at me did nothing to assure me that my feelings of unattractiveness were all in my head.
I was again reminded of the importance of having a female-only medical team when I went to see the chiro this morning. My neck has been in spasm for ages, because I am so afraid of saying 'no' to either of my kids' requests to be carried that I frequently find myself lugging around 27kg of child (I know, I know - my sister is always looking at me pointedly and saying 'Who is flying this plane' when I give in to my kids, but I believe that to be a rhetorical question).
After months of either turning my entire body when I want to check my blind spot while overtaking in my car, or simply neglecting to do so and hoping for the best, I decided it was time to take things in hand. Hence today's visit - the only problem being that since my chiro is a guy, visiting him requires as much prep as going to a red carpet event or appearing on Clifton in a bikini. This created a Catch 22: on the one hand, my desire to sleep in waged war against the need to pluck my eyebrows and iron my hair but, mornings being what they are, I decided to act like normal people and just go to the appointment without embarking on a spa-style professional beauty journey first.
(Alright, confession time: I may have a tiny, slight, minute crush on my chiro. I understand that, as a married woman, this is highly inappropriate - also, he is the same age as Harry Styles. But then again, that may be part of his attractiveness. Either way, although eyebrow grooming was out of the question, I had carefully planned my outfit to hide the fact that there has been no Pilates in six months, as he suggested, and so was rather taken aback when he presented a nylon gingham garment with no back and asked me to put it on.)
So there I was, lying on my back as his face hovered above mine, wishing I could just relax into the moment when, instead, my mind was flooded with questions. Is there any way my oats could have given me garlic breath? Do I have any bears in the cave (a dirty nose, for the uninitiated)? Can he smell my shampoo and does this make him feel comforted, knowing that I tried to be clean for him? Or is he repulsed by my eyebrow stubble?
I think my paranoia in this regard stems from my own reluctance to touch people - that episode from Friends where Ross was reduced to massaging people with a wooden spoon springs to mind. In fact, for a while I contemplated becoming a yoga teacher, but then I considered having to handle other people's cellulite while I adjusted their poses, having to pretend I didn't mind that their sweat - which is, after all, just diluted urine - was getting all over me, and I knew this simply wasn't for me.
This is what I am thinking while my chiro is adjusting my neck. I am worried that he is finding the grapey texture of the mole on my neck (it had started out as little more than a freckle, but you know what happens to moles during pregnancy - it now looks like I have a little twin peering out from behind my ear) disturbing, and that he is yearning to wipe his hands on his pants after touching me (which is what I would do), and wondering if he is simply waiting for an opportune moment to do so, and trying to talk without exhaling in case I do indeed have garlic breath, which makes me sound weird...and then he starts to shake my head about. I imagined how I must look, with my head bobbing wildly about like one of those spring-loaded dogs on a dashboard, subjected to a drive through a mountain pass, my teeth chattering ever so slightly and the unbleached hairs of my moustache glinting as they briefly came into the sunny patch by his window, and then disappearing again, kind of like a strobe light.
I really hope my neck is better after that session - if it isn't, I will have to book an hour with my therapist before I see the chiro again, just to boost my self-esteem. She's female, of course.
There have been other uncomfortable instance along the way, like the time I went to interview a gastroenterologist about future medical developments. I was pregnant at the time, which turned out to work against me when he led our conversation onto the topic new treatments for hemorrhoids. "Looking at you now, being pregnant, I'd say you're probably suffering," he said cheerfully. I wasn't - but knowing that was the first thought that came into his head when he looked at me did nothing to assure me that my feelings of unattractiveness were all in my head.
I was again reminded of the importance of having a female-only medical team when I went to see the chiro this morning. My neck has been in spasm for ages, because I am so afraid of saying 'no' to either of my kids' requests to be carried that I frequently find myself lugging around 27kg of child (I know, I know - my sister is always looking at me pointedly and saying 'Who is flying this plane' when I give in to my kids, but I believe that to be a rhetorical question).
After months of either turning my entire body when I want to check my blind spot while overtaking in my car, or simply neglecting to do so and hoping for the best, I decided it was time to take things in hand. Hence today's visit - the only problem being that since my chiro is a guy, visiting him requires as much prep as going to a red carpet event or appearing on Clifton in a bikini. This created a Catch 22: on the one hand, my desire to sleep in waged war against the need to pluck my eyebrows and iron my hair but, mornings being what they are, I decided to act like normal people and just go to the appointment without embarking on a spa-style professional beauty journey first.
(Alright, confession time: I may have a tiny, slight, minute crush on my chiro. I understand that, as a married woman, this is highly inappropriate - also, he is the same age as Harry Styles. But then again, that may be part of his attractiveness. Either way, although eyebrow grooming was out of the question, I had carefully planned my outfit to hide the fact that there has been no Pilates in six months, as he suggested, and so was rather taken aback when he presented a nylon gingham garment with no back and asked me to put it on.)
So there I was, lying on my back as his face hovered above mine, wishing I could just relax into the moment when, instead, my mind was flooded with questions. Is there any way my oats could have given me garlic breath? Do I have any bears in the cave (a dirty nose, for the uninitiated)? Can he smell my shampoo and does this make him feel comforted, knowing that I tried to be clean for him? Or is he repulsed by my eyebrow stubble?
I think my paranoia in this regard stems from my own reluctance to touch people - that episode from Friends where Ross was reduced to massaging people with a wooden spoon springs to mind. In fact, for a while I contemplated becoming a yoga teacher, but then I considered having to handle other people's cellulite while I adjusted their poses, having to pretend I didn't mind that their sweat - which is, after all, just diluted urine - was getting all over me, and I knew this simply wasn't for me.
This is what I am thinking while my chiro is adjusting my neck. I am worried that he is finding the grapey texture of the mole on my neck (it had started out as little more than a freckle, but you know what happens to moles during pregnancy - it now looks like I have a little twin peering out from behind my ear) disturbing, and that he is yearning to wipe his hands on his pants after touching me (which is what I would do), and wondering if he is simply waiting for an opportune moment to do so, and trying to talk without exhaling in case I do indeed have garlic breath, which makes me sound weird...and then he starts to shake my head about. I imagined how I must look, with my head bobbing wildly about like one of those spring-loaded dogs on a dashboard, subjected to a drive through a mountain pass, my teeth chattering ever so slightly and the unbleached hairs of my moustache glinting as they briefly came into the sunny patch by his window, and then disappearing again, kind of like a strobe light.
I really hope my neck is better after that session - if it isn't, I will have to book an hour with my therapist before I see the chiro again, just to boost my self-esteem. She's female, of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment