Or my doctor, rather. Thanks to those pesky HIPAA laws, I’m not even sure anyone’s allowed to admit that they even *have* a doctor anymore.

Remember Marcus Welby, MD? Remember Joe Gannon? (Remember TV doctors from the 60’s and 70’s? They never joked around and did silly things? They took my health seriously. That’s what’s wrong with our healthcare system now. Too many Grey’s Anatomy docs doing the horizontal bop in the supply closet and not enough Alex Stones who kept their pants on because they were married to Donna Reed and that should be enough for anybody!)

Remember when they had just diagnosed The Disease of the Week and they had their hapless victim patient in their clutches and they had to share the news that the damned thing was going to be impossible to cure, Marcus and Joe and Trapper John would always haul the doomed, wan-looking young woman (well, for Joe it was always a young woman, with whom he’d fall hopelessly in love…Marcus was always looking for a good cup of decaf and was immune to the charms of his patients, and Trapper John passed off the gorgeous ones to Gonzo, who apparently worked a stripper pole to get through med school and why don’t my doctors look like that????)…

Oh. Did I say that out loud?

Anyway, the proud owner of TDOTW would always get the news in a book-lined office. Always. Never sitting on the exam table clutching a paper gown around them, or trying to make the ends meet in the back as they limped down the hall clutching the urine sample no one told them what to do with.

No, everyone sat around looking very grave in the doctor’s office hearing about the prognosis of TDOTW.

I just got done with most of my annual well-woman exam, which is called that because I am, technically, well. Right now. But my dear doctor, who looks nothing like Gonzo or even Joe Gannon, is determined to root through every molecule of my being until she finds something wrong, at which point I will cease to be a ‘well’ woman and then I’ll become a wet-my-pants-worried woman. (In two years, when I turn fifty and become colonoscopy-bait, she’s going to start referring me to spelunking professionals who will *really* leave no stone unturned, but that’s for a different day.)

So, to fulfill my doctor’s quest for peaked-looking molecules I got referred out for bloodwork and ultrasounds and mammograms and whatnot and I obediently complied. And then I wait for the phone calls, because she’s not going to schedule an appointment for me to sit in her office. I’m not even going to get a phone call from a live human being.

Instead, I get Terror Waiting, a diabolical new way to deliver the news that I have TDOTW. It works this way:

1. Phone rings.

2. I answer with the traditional “hello?”

3. I am greeted with a Perky, automated Voice, informing me that I have A Message From My Doctor. (The perky voice has never even dreamed that she had TDOTW, so she remains unsympathetic.)

4. I am told to call a number. I frantically try to find a pen. There is no pen. There might be a crayon. No, wait. There’s a pencil with no lead. Oh, crap. Why don’t I just slice open my finger with a steak knife (that, I can find) and scrawl the phone number in blood on my wall???? Because there is no way I will be able to sleep tonight if I don’t get that message; I’ll lie awake for hours wondering if maybe the Perky Voice sounded sad there because she knew something???

5. I manage to transcribe the number.

6. I call it. I verify that I am, indeed, me several times. And then the Perky Voice deigns to deliver my message.

7. Which tells me that everything is fine. I have cholesterol levels that would make Marcus Welby weep with joy. And no TDOTW.

For now.