The Price of Vanity

Today I had a very frustrating experience at the doctor's office. I was there to try to get one more pregnancy souvenir taken care of, my spider veins.

I really don't have that many of these on my legs, and one of them I've had since I was a teenager, but a while back I thought I would look into getting them treated. And I wanted to get rid of a large mole that developed during my first pregnancy, called an agioma. This was my sort of "congratulations-you-carried-and-gave-birth-to-three-beautiful-children-and-now-you-are-done-with-that-crap" present to myself. Yes, yes, pregnancy is nature's most amazing gift, yada, yada, yada.

So I went to a 'consultation' that consisted of me sitting in a group of 50+ year olds and discussing cosmetic treatments with a medical dermatologist (this was the necessary first step to getting treated at the medical foundation I use for my primary care). The doctor looked at each person one at a time and you had to sit there through the whole thing. I was easily the youngest in the room, so I felt a bit like a calf in a herd of grandma cows that they were shuffling through the pasture as fast as possible. They clearly had more important cattle to handle than us.

Despite this not very warm and fuzzy experience, I decided to make an appointment. When I called I was told there was nothing on file for the prescribed treatment for the angioma, so I'd have to get it looked at again. Clearly this place, a well established medical facility, has some marks against it in my book already. But I really like some of their departments (pediatrics, namely), so I was willing to move forward.

I did have an alternative location in mind, a skin spa, but decided to go to the reknowned medical facility for this procedure. Huh. Should have given that another thought, I guess.

So today was the day that I was supposed to get my youthful legs back. I show up 10 minutes late; my bad. But I did have to get my husband to take the 3 year old to preschool - kicking and screaming - and then wait for the babysitter to show up for my other two. I am called in by a nurse that either isn't happy that I am late or just can't seem to find her happy place. She's rude and has a very indignant tone to her voice. She proceeds to tell me that I didn't listen to their advice in making appointments in the summer-time, which is the worst time of year to do any cosmetic treatments.

"You'll just end up with brown streaks in place of the spider veins that you say you don't like," she says. Excuse me, but are there people out there that actually like spider veins on their legs?

My retort is that I didn't recall any such advice and I didn't realize that treating veins would cause pigmentation changes. Although this does ring a bell when she mentions it, but I don't say so.

She then essentially tells me that I'm the idiot here, not her. She says "you people" were all at that cosmetic dermatology consultation and that's what they always tell "the groups". Just like, the sky is always blue. It's a fact. They said it and I didn't heed the warning.

At this point it is not lost on me that her reference to the room full of wrinkled, gray-haired, age-spotted women was like we were a bunch of puffy-lipped, breast-augmented, botoxed thirty year old bottle-blonds looking to get an eyelash transplant.

I mean, give me a break. I know there are people here with serious health concerns, but it's not like we aren't paying customers too. OUT-OF-POCKET paying customers, by the way. And I didn't just pull the nurse out of a life-saving melanoma removal to talk about botox. I made an appointment, like everyone else.

Then I ask her to just cancel my treatment for today, but to look at the angioma so I know what kind of treatment I can get for that, explaining why I don't have that information from the consultation. Since I am clearly wasting her time now, she gives a big sigh and tells me to show it to her.

Next I get a series of condescending remarks: "those are nothing" about some of my spider veins; "you know, that's not the angioma" while pointing to a vein, which I am well aware of and never claimed it to be; "yes, you are really tan" stated in the same tone she might say "yes, I see you are smoking while eating a large order of cheese fries and drinking a vodka tonic". Finally she looks at it and proclaims she needs to get the doctor to look at it too. Fabulous.

I then wait 35 minutes for the same doctor to come in and look at it (again) and tell us what is recommended. At least I'm not the only one that had her time wasted; the nurse was waiting too.

Then I bid farewell to the two women that look like they have spent way too much time in their coffins offices. I think they must drive to their medical facility in the dark of night so as to avoid any exposure to "the elements", like the beautiful sunshine that "my people" like to enjoy.

Skin spa here I come.

In the winter of course.

I'm not that vain.

Souvenirs Here!

So yesterday I finally surrendered one of my pregnancy souvenirs.

When I was pregnant with my first child, my belly button popped out. While this is a common thing with a lot of pregnant women, mine never went back to normal. I kept thinking it might be the extra weight, or that it was just a little confused like the rest of my body, adjusting to a new state of normal. But when the weight was gone my belly button still slightly resembled a ping pong ball. Okay, that may be a little exaggerated. Maybe a smooshed grape.

Turns out I had a an umbilical hernia, that I had to have surgically repaired. Why hadn't I known about this possibility beforehand? I mean I would still have gotten pregnant and had my child, but at least I could have been a little mentally prepared for the change. Of course it didn't end there. The pregnancy souvenir shop at the maternity wards are loaded with all kinds of useless and unattractive trinkets and doo hickeys. And pregnant women WILL take home some along with their newborns, like it or not.

I think when you first get pregnant, your OB should give you a chance to pick out your souvenirs. Maybe we could make some kind of deal if we negotiate it all up front.

"I'll take the stretchmarks, but only in the butt, not in the belly. If you can make that happen, I'll take an extra dose of morning sickness and a side of spider veins. And please NO HEMORRHOIDS. I'll take skin tags instead."

If the doctors were really smart, they'd offer some post child bearing services in combination with their OB practice. They could have signs in their offices that read "Have me deliver your second child and get your vericose vein treatment half off! And if you are crazy enough to come back a third time, I'll throw in some free stretchmark cream!"