As if this week wasn’t bad enough (what do you mean, it’s only Monday!!) I had to go for a mammogram after class today. After having two kids and a slew of health problems, I don’t really have any dignity left, but I do have my indignation. Are we surprised?

Not at the procedure. The technician was great; a really nice efficient lady. It wasn’t her fault that I made her laugh when I asked her what she told people at parties what she did for a living, this after she had maneuvered and manhandled me for a few minutes. Brrrr, her hands were cold. And those little nips she fastened to my own? I forgot they were there till I got home and changed my clothes. For a minute, I thought I felt a lump, and panicked. Then I looked in the mirror and thought, all I need now are tassels. They were very pink and kind of polka-dotted. Lap dance, anyone? You’ll need a sturdy chair.

Not the facility; it was beautiful and very convenient. I think they must have been having a geriatric special today, though, because it sure didn’t look like the waiting room of Planned Parenthood back in the seventies. Not that I would know.

It wasn’t the lack of recent magazines, either. They had THIS WEEK’s ‘People,’ so now I am caught up on politics, which celebrity is unmarried and knocked up and glowing, which celebrities go shopping JUST LIKE ME, and which 19-year-old singer has a sophomore album. Or maybe it was that the singer WAS a sophomore. I forget.

It also wasn’t the employees. They were gracious and kind.

No, it was all the old men hanging around in the waiting room and outside the dressing rooms.

Don’t get me wrong. I love men. Most of the time, I enjoy having a nice old man to talk to, whilst whiling away the time in a doctor’s office. It’s just that this particular place was, um, for women. There were women giving out personal girly information, and occasionally exposing some girly anatomy, and wearing ugly gowns that were open in the front, and which would probably close on a normal-sized person but I think you all know by now that I am on the ‘circus-tent’ side of junior petite. Yes, the place was full of old men, some still sitting beside an old woman, some alone because their old woman was inside having her long bananas ironed, some standing outside a dressing room because they couldn’t bear to be far from Pookie for very long, and some just standing or sitting around looking disoriented and weird.

I guess my point is, none of them belonged there. And if some old woman just couldn’t go to a doctor without Sweetie-Pie at her side, well, she’s an idiot. And if she couldn’t drive for any reason other than “Oh, I just COULDN’T drive, tee hee,” then the husband should have had the perception to realize he didn’t belong in the midst of the girly activity and sat in a more obscure area. There WAS a little room next to the big room, but no men were in there. They were all sitting right by their women, or alone and waiting for her to return and be comforted because of the indignity of it all, boo hoo. This is not the examination or mammogram room, mind you, but it’s the cattle car just outside of the MACHINES.

Item: I am not referring to handicapped women who are not physically able to go to any kind of a doctor alone. But even those husbands should go sit elsewhere while she’s being compressed, out of consideration for the other women, in a Breast Lab.

Because, NONE of those old men was dozing or reading. Every one of them was looking around with avid and interested eyes, even the disoriented ones. This is just wrong. Once in a while a nurse would enter the room and ask that anyone without an appointment please go to the outside room but the old men refused to budge. One of them said that if his fragile wife walked back into this room and he wasn’t right where she’d left him, the wife would have an ‘episode.’ Oh good grief.

It’s been a long time since I was the youngest person in a room. So you can just imagine how old all those other women appeared to be.

It just struck me that I sat for an hour in a room full of helpless twits and sexist enablers.

*I am not 73.

(Some other time I will blog about the husband of my maternity ward roommate who refused to leave, which meant I couldn’t have my own baby with me, which made me cry but I was young and didn’t know I had any rights like other people.) (Things have sure changed, haven’t they.)
(I still hate that couple. Selfish pricks.)