Accompanying Your Partner to Medical Appointments — Revisited

This is a follow-up to a recent post on our prac­tice of accom­pa­ny­ing each other when­ever pos­si­ble to our med­ical appoint­ments. I had another sched­uled med­ical pro­ce­dure. One that involved male gen­i­talia, nee­dles, some rather exotic med­ica­tion (it would be erotic under less clin­i­cal con­di­tions) and some neat imag­ing tech­nol­ogy. The physi­cian sched­uled to per­form this test had always read­ily accepted Still Here Too’s pres­ence at pre­vi­ous test he had per­formed on inti­mate parts of my body. He had been extremely open and infor­ma­tive, explain­ing not only what he was doing, but what the test were showing.

So we arrived for the test, early I might add - not such a prob­lem for me, but Still Here Too is a night owl by nat­ural incli­na­tion, so she was show­ing just how much she cares for me! Checked in as usual, sat down and waited to be called. As soon as the call came and we both stood up, Nurse firmly states, “Only you, no one can come with you”. Nurse did not like it when I imme­di­ately ques­tioned why not. Nurse did not like it when I ques­tioned their response that Doc­tor did not allow patients to be accom­pa­nied for test pro­ce­dures since Doc­tor had allowed me to be accom­pa­nied on every other pro­ce­dure. After a few give and takes, after a few “har­rumphs”, Nurse finally agreed to allow Still Not Here to join me in the room with the state­ment, “Well she will just have to leave when Doc­tor gets here.”

Guess what - Doc­tor got there, Doc­tor said, “Hello” to both of us. We told Doc­tor what Nurse had said. Doc­tor just shook his head, frowned and said to Still Here Too, “You are absolutely wel­come to stay.” She did stay, Doc­tor did show her all the images, but she did not watch the part with the nee­dle and male gen­i­talia - she has a thing about nee­dles. I did watch, it was not as bad as it sounds - but I would not rec­om­mend it, even though there are prob­a­bly peo­ple out there who think it is grand fun.

So don’t let the front staff stop you from doing what is right for you, you part­ner, your health and your peace of mind. And if your physi­cian does not sup­port you in the way you think they should, find another physician.

Is Still Here