Last week I resumed my search for an Ob-Gyn. I checked my insurance carrier’s website for participating local doctors and ruled people out by sex (women only, please), by location (convenient), by name (why not), by when they graduated (I prefer someone older than me); and I also decided that I want someone with a private practice instead of a group practice, so I temporarily ruled out anyone with duplicate addresses.
After that it came down to how many rings, or how they answered the phone, or how soon they called back. It’s arbitrary, right? Without a recommendation, what else can you do? I Google everyone, but not much comes up except a bunch of paid doctor search services that I’m not (yet) willing to pay for, so essentially I close my eyes and point. And I’m always afraid that I’ll pick Nelson instead of Nielson, and Nielson will be the really cool doctor and I’ll never know it, except that of course my life will be derailed for having chosen the wrong Ob-Gyn. But choose I must.
My choice was Dr. Martha Cole. She’s in Chevy Chase, and that seemed good, and she’s near Mazza Gallerie, and that seemed good too. And the woman who answered the phone was friendly and called me right back after I faxed my insurance card, and she mailed me the paperwork to fill out in advance, and all that seemed good and well organized. So I set aside the Washingtonian’s 2005 Best Doctor list for the time being and hoped for the best.
Dr. Cole’s office is in an apartment building, and I had misgivings the minute I opened the door to her 2nd floor office. It was shabby and dated—probably 1980s—and it was actually messy. It had a homey quality, but a doctor’s office shouldn’t be like a home, much less a messy home. It should be sterile, and new.
With reservations, I handed over my paperwork, and I was immediately directed to a bathroom in the back to leave a urine sample in a cup I was told I would find on the counter. I passed through a messy work area to an almost messy bathroom that hadn’t really been updated from Apartment to Doctor’s Office. I did find a cup on the counter, but it already had pee in it. It wasn’t a urine sample in a plastic container with a lid and a label, sitting next to another plastic container for me to use. It was just pee, sitting there in a 2-ounce Dixie cup with cartoon characters on it, like I should just add my pee to it, or pour it into the sink and fill it with my own, or spill it on the floor, or anything.
I didn't even look for another cup. I thought, I don't want my pee next to that pee. What if it got swapped, for crying out loud. It happens with babies, after all. So I left the bathroom and told them that there was already a urine sample in the bathroom. There was a little confusion as the nice woman at the front desk asked the doctor’s assistant if Dr. Cole was done with that urine sample, and I was ultimately directed to the exam room instead.
I won’t go into every detail, but the exam room was also kind of messy, with too-cluttered shelves and leaflets from the ‘70s and two posters of the female body and organs from maybe the ‘60s (haven’t we actually evolved since then?). Then there was a box of cereal on the shelves and some kind of calcium bites. I don’t know if that stuff was there for the doctor's personal use or for my edification, but in either case, I don’t want to see it out on the shelves where I’m supposed to get naked.
Soon (I don’t like to dish, but…) a not-very-confident assistant took my blood pressure and weighed me and checked my height (with some difficulty), and brought one more insurance form for me to fill out. And that’s when I noticed the oven mitts on the stirrups. Oven mitts. Like fabric foot fettish hands waiting to catch and fondle my feet. I wracked my brain to remember what’s normally on the stirrups in an exam room but I just couldn’t—and still can't—remember. I’ve been putting my feet in stirrups for 20 years and I couldn’t recall a single stirrup cover with any clarity.
I do like to give people a chance, and I never ruled out the possibility that Dr. Cole is the super cool doc that I seek, but I did NOT want to stay for the exam. And even if I could suffer taking my clothes off in there, I couldn’t imagine going back to that office again, so there really wasn't much point. The fact is, my next Ob-Gyn may well be the woman who helps me deliver a baby, and I don’t want her to keep Fiber One in her exam room.
Being a grownup sometimes involves enduring situations that you don’t like—boring conversations with your boss, mammograms, 7-mile runs, opera—but it can also mean knowing when to bail out of a situation you find uncomfortable. So I made an adult decision not to spread ‘em for Dr. Cole. I offered to pay my co-pay anyway but the nice woman at the front desk handed my check back to me, and even validated my parking. I hate leaving halfway through a movie, because I always think there must be something redeeming about it, and for that same reason I almost wish I’d stayed for the exam. Again, I still think that Dr. Cole could be a terrific doctor, and I can't say a bad thing about her. But she should clean up her office. First impressions are important.
When I got home I Googled stirrups oven mitts, and yielded 1,180 results, so it’s not completely unheard of. But by page 4 you’re looking at weird lists and even weirder stories. By way of comparison, stirrups speculum yields 50,600, stirrups paper gown yields 65,800 results, and speculum exam yields 367,000.
Dr. Martha Cole, 4701 Willard Avenue, Chevy Chase, 301.656.3456
Washingtonian Top Doctors 2005
blankets, soap and lotion, clothing, dishes and flatware, rugs, pottery, sandals, lamps, sewing kits, note cards, furniture, and a feast of magnets, note pads, key chains, luggage tags, etc. that can't really be categorized. What does it have it all have in common? It's all creative, beautiful, quirky and/or capricious. It's your one-stop shop for Adorable. But as delightful as it all is, there's nothing frivolous about it; there's nothing there you couldn't actually use. It's Whimsy meets Function. 
