Physicals

As I sit here to write this blog, the 80's song "Physical," by Olivia Newton-John, comes to mind.

Let's get physical, physical,
I wanna get physical, physical,
let's get into the physical, physical
Let me hear your body talk, your body talk
Let me hear your body talk, body talk.

No, this has nothing to do with this blog. It's just a song from my past. I grew up in the 80's, with an older sister. However, a song does pretty regularly comes to mind with many of my day to day situations. This is just another one of them. Enjoy!

Anyway, on to the title of this blog: physicals.

I'm not really into physicals. You know, the one where the Dr. tells you to turn your head and cough kind of physical. Ya, those. I've never been a big fan. Unfortunately, I'm having one done next Monday. We have this pretty thorough physical through our health care provider and I signed up. I just want to make sure all is well. It's been a while and I wanted to know where I was at physically. Well, today I had to go in and get the pre-blood draw so they have the results for next week. No big deal, so I thought.

I show up this morning to the St. Mary's Hospital campus and find my building. The Center for Health building, 4th floor, suite 460. I go in and it's totally nice. Kind of like you see in the movies. Maybe lawyer movies with lots of money. Marble floors, security people, a receptionist who greets you at the desk and elevators that go up real high. That kind of nice. Anyway, I go up the elevator, find suite 460 and go in. They called me really quickly too. So I go into the back room with a nurse and start filling out the normal HIPPA paperwork. I start creating small talk, asking a few questions and just being friendly. She begins explaining the process and what gets completed during this physical. She mentions getting hooked up to an EKG, vision tests, hearing tests, etc... but never the "turn your head and cough" test. Sweet! Suddenly she mentions a phrase of words and I only know one of those words in the whole phrase. The word: stool. I asked her to repeat herself. Sure enough, she said stool.

I've never been in this situation before. I have NO idea how to get a stool sample. All these scenarios are running through my brain and suddenly, I get the nerve to say, ma'am, how do I do that? Good question, but bad as well. Good, because now I know how to do it, bad, because I had to have this woman, who I don't know, explain it to me. Awkward!

So, here it is. Three consecutive days worth.

This is what they look like. You can only imagine how I felt. I had no idea what to do when I saw these things. Frankly, I'm not looking forward to this.

I guess there are worse things in life, but this ranks up there with the best of them. Actually, right there in front of turning my head and coughing.