Really???

Today, I tasted the many flavors of incompetence that seem to be packaged so deliciously here at Mount Sinai Medical Center. And it all began at what was once my favorite Perinatology office.

Our appointment was at 2:00, but because we waited for 1/2 hour last week, the nurse called ahead to find out when we should really get there. We were advised to actually depart at 2:00, getting us there around 2:20 - too early for CP Time. And we still waited for 20-30 minutes - probably not the best thing for someone on bed rest.

When they called me back to the exam room, Brad wheeled me in. I got up on the table as usual, waiting for things to get started. And then the tech asked the most unusual question:

"What are you here for?"

Well, gee, I don't know, let's see. I'm pregnant. This is my third time here in three weeks. I'm in a room with an ultrasound machine. I'm going to hazard a guess that I'm here for a f***ing ultrasound.

But rather than answer as such, I provided her with a little bit of history:

"On vacation, yada yada, water broke at 29 weeks, stuck in the hospital on bed rest..."

That seemed to satisfy her enough to explain that I'd be getting a routine amniotic fluid check and a few other measurements to determine my biophysical profile score. Brad interjected, explaining that the doctor wanted us to make sure we also got a baby measurement and cervical length. Apparently, by saying this, he'd yelled expletives at her.

She snapped back that their office would perform neither of these measurements.

"Your last baby measurement was 2 weeks ago (actually it was 1 week ago at their office, and 2 days ago in my room, but Ms. Rules didn't need to know that), and we only perform this measurement once every three weeks due to inaccuracy. And we won't measure the cervix of a woman whose membranes have ruptured (that's a medical way of saying my water broke)."

We explain that this is what the doctor ordered, and that in fact my cervix has been measured before in a non-intrusive way. But this serves no purpose. She called the doctor she reports to, called my nurse back at the hospital, demanded a faxed prescription for the measurements (which she claimed she didn't have)...hell, she might have called President Obama about the matter.

After about 30 minutes lying down on a table with gel on my exposed belly, she was satisfied enough by her Spanish Inquisition to begin the exam. Things continued to go downhill from there, as she shook her head and mumbled under her breath that my fluid level was very low. (Only later did she note that the baby can hide the pockets of fluid, preventing her from being able to measure two of the four quadrants.) By this point, I was starting to quietly lose it. In the meantime, she stumbles around the room, getting ready to measure my cervix. Then came the following:

"Okay, we're just going to have you lower your legs. Hmmmm, I just need to figure out how this is going to work. It's been a really long time since I've done this."

In my head, I said, "Bitch, back the hell up off my cervix with your uneducated, non-knowing-how-to-perform-a-routine-exam ass!!"

In reality, I shot Brad one look as she stepped out of the room to get an education. And Brad knew to take that look and translate it back to her as, "We're outta here."

At that point, we still had to wait for our "report" to share with the doctor. It was supposed to take one minute. But we waited...and waited...and waited. And that's not the worst part. As we sat in that lobby, I started to get a whiff of something funky. Moments later, a staffer walked out spraying a can of Lysol, leading right up to a small, open trash can. Oh...no...she did-nt just fish a dirty diaper out of there. Whoooooo throws an unconcealed, shit-filled diaper into an office trash can in a public lobby?? This reminds me of the Google freaks, changing their baby on the floor of the cafe, then wielding the dirty diaper through the dessert trays like bio-terrorists before tossing the mess into a nearby compost bin. Really.

Let the countdown begin, because I am soooooo done.