My Helicopter Mother and the Gynecologist Appointment

[disalarming]

My mother insisted on driving me to the gynecologist this morning for my yearly check-up. While ordinarily this would have been an innocent enough gesture, the fact that she wanted to take me to the gynecologist meant only one thing: she wanted to know the details of my appointment.

Generally speaking, this is not always a bad thing. It’s good when a mother cares about the health of her child, after all. But it does have the tendency to get mighty awkward when it’s about gynecological health, because there are certain things about a daughter’s life that a mother doesn’t need to know about her daughter. Or at least, certain things MY mother never needs to know about me.

The awkwardness set in as soon as I returned to the waiting room after my appointment was over, where I found my mother reading a magazine.

How was it? What did she ask you? Did you have to have a pelvic exam? You have a bandaid on your arm – did you have a blood test? Why did you even need one?

I explained to her that I had a pelvic exam because they recommend all women to start getting them annually once they are 21, and that a blood test was routine. It wasn’t a lie (perhaps a lie of omission, at least for the first part; the blood test was actually routine) and it did the trick as she seemed satisfied with my answers. However, I can’t help but think that the whole situation could’ve been avoided if I could’ve just gone by myself to my damn gynecologist!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.