Annual exams are a time that I look forward to for one reason, and one reason only. Let's call him Dr Rick.
I was 24. I was using condoms as my primary birth control method, but needed something better in addition. I was with a boyfriend who I affectionately call my "drama" relationship. We fought, loudly, in parking lots and bars. We threw things at each other, often clothes, out windows, since we lived together (unbeknown to my parents) for much of that time. We danced all night to very loud music, and experimented in the sexual underground of mid-town Sacramento and down-town San Francisco. We were always safe, in that way you had to be in the late 80's AIDS scare, and no actual infidelity occurred, but we were definitely a little further on the edge than I am comfortable admitting. I had met him while drinking at a club just blocks from my midtown apartment, taken him home on the first night, and spent the next couple of years just feeling all the energy that comes with youth and large amounts of sex.
But I digress, this is not a story about that boy.
I had come home to Monterey for a week (a break from the above mentioned boyfriend) and called the first ob/gyn in the phone book my finger came to. His office scheduled me for an appointment that same day. I walk in, scared a bit, but instantly intrigued. I was charmed by the whitewashed carved wood seats and mauve walls. I loved that my pen was a flower, and that there was soft music in the background. I was comforted by the lack of reception area marketing clutter, but instead had several current magazines, a couple romance novels, and a coffee pot with china cups sitting next to it. A little sign in pretty calligraphy said "Help yourself, but it is decaf " and there was a smiley face with little hearts right next to it. The whole place smelled a little like a lavender sachet. Basically, the exact opposite of the life I was leading.
I undressed, put on a pink paper gown, and prepared to have my annual exam by some older, doctory-looking guy, and his sweet little nurse. I had planned to not tell him a word about my sexual history, just that I would need birth control for my committed relationship. I had planned to be shy and demure, and quiet. I had planned to get it done, and get out.
What I got was Dr Rick. He was 34. He had delivered something like 4 babies all by himself at that point, and was still getting established. I think I was actual patient number 37 or something ridiculous. He had been doing this for all of about 5 minutes. His wife of 2 years had just given birth to a daughter (his first) three weeks before. He had not done a c-section yet in his private practice. He ran marathons and planned to do a triathlon in the summer. He had little tiny baby feet on his white lab coat. He had pretty eyes. I was in love.
I spent more that 30 minutes with him talking about sex and choices, babies and safety, and about relationships and love. I learned that he liked angel hair pasta. He learned that I never cheated on any of the boyfriends I had. I learned that he loved woman because his mother was a neurotic basket case. He learned that I loved men because I was terrified of missing something. He called me Elisabeth, I called him Rick. We became friends in that small space of time between 1:15 and 1:45.
In the last 21 years, Dr Rick has been a place of solace and a place of joy. He is the one that confirmed the poly cystic ovaries diagnosis when my first ex-husband and I were trying to get pregnant. I cried in his office and took the referral to the fertility specialist. He is the one that ordered all the STD tests when I learned that the same ex-husband had been cheating, obviously unprotected because the woman was pregnant, and now I could not trust if I was safe or not. I had $12,000 dollars worth of fertility medication on my kitchen counter next to my divorce papers. I cried in his office and took the name of someone who would help me sell the unneeded fertility drugs.
He is the one that confirmed my pregnancy with Seth. He is the one that told me he could not hear the baby's heartbeat on the ultra sound. He is the one that told me I needed to go to the hospital immediately, and he would meet me there. I cried in his office and let him dial the phone for me so I could tell my husband that our baby had died.
Since then, Dr Rick has delivered my other children. He cried with me in the operating room when my daughter came. He laughed with me when my son, seconds old, peed on his pediatrician. He held my children for pictures and showed me pictures of his girls along the way. He is the one I confessed to when I was so tired as a new mom that I understood why new mothers feel like putting their children in dumpsters. He helped me understand that I was normal, and how to take care of myself. He laughed and told me he had had almost the exact conversation with his wife, except hers was plastic bags instead of dumpsters. He said we are both good moms.
When my children's father and I split up, Dr Rick is one of the people I cried with. And he said just the right thing, saying men who are mean and cruel to their wives are sociopaths who don't deserve their families, and I would be better off without him. By now, he is 2 decades into a practice, delivered thousands of babies, and is actually the go-to surgeon for high-risk obstetric and gynecologic procedures on the Peninsula.
Yesterday, I had my annual exam. Dr. Rick joked with me about how the PAP police would be sent the next time I waited 18 months instead of 12 between appointments. We talked about sex and choices, babies and safety, relationships and love. When I said that my 45 year old body just was not gonna have any more babies, he said he thought that meant I was not insane. And then I cried in his office as the weight of all that hit me. No more pregnancies, no more children to birth, no more babies to hold, no more breastfeeding. He got it, and sat next to me, just quiet and still.
He still calls me Elisabeth. I still call him Rick. I will see him again next year.
