P-Day

Today was my Planned Parenthood appointment for my annual gynecological exam, except this I did it insurance-less style. I was expecting protesters outside the building, like there are for the PP in NYC that are covered in pictures of bloody fetuses, but it was actually in a nice office building. So I took the elevator up to the 6th floor, went through the METAL DETECTOR and had my bag checked, and then checked in at registration. I was told to pay in advance - $165 - and I said, how could they know if that would adequately cover everything I wanted done and the woman said, "Child, that covers everything, the works." And I said alrighty and sat down in my seat to begin what I was had read on Yelp was a 3-4 hour wait for the luxury of having someone inspect my vagina.

Unfortunately, I have nothing really bad to say about this place. The people in the waiting room seemed normal and not homeless, and they called my name in 30 minutes. The woman who was taking my medical history kept on muttering that the computer was about to shut down, about to freeze, about to freeze for sure and that they called her in from her vacation to man the shop today, at which point I informed her that she was "doing god's work"at which point she agreed with me and asked me what I was doing for New Years. I told her the only thing I wanted for New Years was a clean pap result, and she said, "what a beautiful present," and then told me to sit in the secondary waiting room, which was the holding area for annual exams, pregnancy tests and HIV tests. I'll spare you the details of the exam, but at one point I was forced to pee in a cup and then walk with this cup PAST THE WAITING AREA FULL OF PEOPLE to the lab as everyone watched me and suffice it to say I nearly died of embarrassment.

All in all, the people there were very nice, the entire thing was over in 2.5 hours, and I wasn't made to feel like an uninsured drain on society or giant loser. The nurse practitioner said at the end, "See you next year" and I had to stop myself from saying "haha, hopefully by that time I'll have health insurance" because if I don't happen to have insurance by next December, I'll have bigger fish to fry.