This Is A Post About My Butt

Does doctor/patient confidentiality go both ways?  I'll take my chances if it means I get to tell you about my bizarre visit with Dr. Augustus Garland Parker, M.D.* (*Name NOT changed because it’s the best ever.)

Kaiser Permanente is a special place.  It's like a DMV for your insides.  Also, the fact that I am under 70 and not shaped like an eggplant means I’m generally a 10 in most Kaiser Permanente waiting rooms.  I was there for my right knee, which had been bothering me for about 2 months, ever since I jammed it while playing catch with my Dad in the park.  (Because my life is a Norman Rockwell painting.)

The nurse called me in and I did my obligatory examination room pondering (should I take my pants off/why did I just read an entire pamphlet on gestational diabetes) before not one, but TWO doctors came in.  Two young dude doctors.  Dr. Augustus Garland Parker did not look at all how I had imagined (which was, of course, a hybrid of Roman Emperor Augustus, Judy Garland, and Richard Parker, the tiger from Life of Pi).  I never learned the second doctor’s name, but he looked exactly like Danny Galvez from Homeland.  So I will call him Dr. Danny Galvez.  Because creativity is an important skill to develop.  Dr. Danny Galvez didn’t say much, but what he did say generally creeped me out.  As I explained the pain around my knee, he sat there nodding with this huge grin on his face.  I probably should have been more tactful but all I thought to say was, “What??”  To which Dr. Danny Galvez responded, “Oh, I’m just really excited to check out your knee."  Outside of a doctor's office?  Totally weird thing to say.  Inside a doctor's office?  Still surprisingly weird thing to say.

Then both Dr. Augustus Garland Parker and Dr. Danny Galvez did their examinations – picking up my leg, turning it every which way, a lot of “Does this hurt?  How about now?”  But nothing hurt.  Because it doesn’t hurt when I touch it.  It hurts when I walk up and down stairs and when I crouch and you wouldn’t think a human spends a lot of time crouching but I spend a LOT of time crouching like probably 40% of my day crouching because I work in a bookstore and the way we store our books it’s like every day there’s a 2:10, 4:40, and 7:00 showing of Crouching Rachel Hidden Bookshelf.

Needless to say, the examination was inconclusive.  Dr. Augustus Garland Parker scribbled some notes, checked some boxes, then turned to me and uttered the 7 most profane words you can say to a 22-year-old female: “You need to work on your glutes.”  The record player in my heart screeeeeeched and then exploded into flames and then a phoenix rose from the ashes and then the phoenix gave me the finger and then hung itself.  I had a bad butt.  Medically.

From what I gather, I am in such terrible shape that my ass can’t hold up the weight of my own body, and my knee has stepped in to pick up the slack.  They explained some exercises I could do to strengthen my medical disaster of a badonk, then asked me to demonstrate to ensure I was doing them correctly.  Most of them were fine: squats and such.  But then Dr. Augustus Garland Parker – my stand up guy, my REAL doctor, with a name and a lab coat, and a goatee that somehow didn’t make me want to punch him – TURNED on me.  He said, “Do you know The Bridge?”  Duh, I know “The Bridge.”  Like any self-loathing, sexually-underconfident female, I’ve read Cosmo and yes I am familiar with “The Bridge.”  For those of you who don't know, “The Bridge” is not only a fantastic Ace of Base album but also a butt-toning exercise in which you lie down with your knees bent, shoot your pelvis to the sky, and clench your butt cheeks like there’s no tomorrow. 

So now it’s Dr. Augustus Garland Benedict Arnold Parker, Dr. Danny “Excited To Touch Your Knee” Galvez, pelvic-thrusting butt-clenching Me, and our good friend PERVASIVE SILENCE.

After I finished my Bridge demonstration and we all put our clothes back on, I stopped off to get some x-rays on my way out and bid adieu to Kaiser for the day.  BUT WAIT.  Guess who left me not one but TWO “non-urgent” (the medical term for “playing hard to get”) voicemails since the visit.  DR. AUGUSTUS GARLAND PARKER, M.D.  When we finally got in touch, he told me the x-rays on my troublesome knee looked fine, but that it seems I am missing part of my left femur.  Guys.  Can we just… let that simmer for a second?  MISSING PART OF MY FEMUR.  So, my knee that sucks is great and my femur that's great is missing.

Apparently there’s a small part of my should-be bone that’s actually some fibrous tissue, maybe left over from some childhood injury?  To be honest, I was pet-sitting a really cute cat when he called and I wasn’t paying very close attention to what he was saying.  But I have to go in for more x-rays.  In the meantime, I’ll be out posting MISSING signs around town.  For my femur.  Not the cat.  Greg, your cat is fine.  Wendell is fine.  I repeat, Wendell is fine.

An Updated Adulthood Checklist for the Post-Grad-Slumpers

This is how I know I'm an adult: I've surpassed the age of 18.

This is how I know I'm not an adult: I live with my parents.  I have 3 pseudo-jobs, none of which the government is aware of.  I assume I shouldn't pay for my own prescriptions or haircuts.  I was claimed as a dependent on somebody else's taxes (nothing like "claimed as a dependent" to make you feel like the ungrateful doesn't-know-how-good-she-has-it college-educated parasite that you are).

So where does this all bring us?  THE ECONOMY, of course.  THE ECONOMY, which, as I don't have to point out, is in all CAPS, meaning I don't have to spell out for you its grave significance, the way someone can write dogma or Dogma or god or God and you just know it's bigger and better and sobering and infinite and heavier cause CAPS are so HEAVY and they carry with them so much INHERENT MEANING that you can infer their weighty importance without so much as a disorienting run-on sentence masking itself as clarity.

THE ECONOMY, or that big, bad, faceless entity that my generation has decided to hate and love.  We hate it because we don't fully understand it, but we've heard it's to blame for our persisting post-grad loserdom.  We love it because it's the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.  People don't scoff at us for living at home.  Our parents don't guilt us for asking to be reimbursed for the grocery shopping.  Friends don't blame us for canceling because we got a babysitting gig.  Not in THIS ECONOMY.

Sure, my adulthood checklist, by this century's standards, remains primarily unchecked.  But I think this is as good a time as any to rework what it means to be an adult.  Because even though I have definitely accepted more than one ride from my mother to a bar this month, I'm still a little grown up.  Just a little.  And here's how I know:

1. I hate pennies.
2. I appreciate naps.
3. Homeless people don't scare me.
4. I don't hollow out the brie at a holiday party, even though the rind is terrible.  Seriously guys, it's terrible.
5. I think there are more good people in this world than bad.
6. I think there are more bad people in this world than good.
7. I hate talking on the phone.
8. I'm on mailing lists.
9. I'm terrified of my credit card.
10. I can't figure out Twitter.
11. Sometimes I call my friends' parents by their first names.
12. I think people drive too fast.
13. NPR is interesting.
14. Sometimes I forget to eat dinner.
15. I watch documentaries by myself.
16. My birthday stresses me out.
17. Of course I'm going to vote.
18. I used to love Law & Order: SVU but now it just scares me.
19. I'm generally out of breath.
20. Sure, you can buy me a drink.

I don't know if I set out to prove a point, what that point would be, or if I've gotten anywhere close to proving it.  I guess  this post-grad slump is just a little emasculating and I'd like to be taken a bit more seriously.  After all, I'm 22 and a half.