What’s on my mind? Medical referrals. Like gold, they are. These days, no one gets anywhere without a referral.
So there I was, clutching mine as I sat in a specialist’s office with really not one clue where I was or why I was there, except that I had a referral.
For reasons not worth mentioning (Hint: Oversized body parts. Further hint: Ma-ny, ma-ny oversized body parts), I assumed I was cooling my oversized heels waiting to see a plastic surgeon.
Visions of butchered bums danced in my head, but I was nervous. No woman wants her ear accidentally grafted to her nose.
My doctor had simply said: “See this person,” and scrawled an undecipherable name. So here I was. Unfortunately, my doctor was rushed, and neglected to elaborate.
The specialist was located in a bank of sleek, modern, glass-and-steel Big City offices. Wow! The only offices I’d ever seen this fancy belonged to divorce lawyers born with gills, fins, and razor-sharp teeth. Given all the youthful, wrinkle-free faces and stick-like upper arms in the anteroom, I guessed that every doctor in these gazillion-dollar offices was a gazillion-dollar plastic surgeon.
As I sat waiting, a Barbie-Doll beautiful woman walked in. She must have had a lot of “procedures,” I thought.
Only those of us familiar with the lingo of plastic surgery know this surgical term. I, myself, have never had any procedures, but after seeing this woman, whatever it is in the plastic surgery department that might be half-price this week, I want it!
I felt an overwhelming desire to leap up and tell that woman how great she looked, but thought better of it because she might slam me with a #metoo suit.
My guess was that she’d been suctioned like a milkshake and carved like a turkey to look “young.” She was probably an old broad who’d had a lot of “work” ... another surgical term.
(Ooops! No one uses the word “broad” today. I should substitute the more medically precise term “old woman.” Hell, she was probably in her late 60s.)
To compliment or not to compliment? I was about to open my yap to say: “I know you’re an old woman in your late 60s who’s had at least one face lift, but the surgeon did a really good job! How much did it cost? Will you also be getting a boob-ectomy? It looks like you need one ... or two, heh-heh.”
She was massive on top. Hu-u-uge. She could have put Stormy Daniels to shame.
(It later dawned on me that my words may have made me more of a social pariah than I already am for past transgressions such as talking with my mouth full of single malt scotch, picking up sidewalk nickels that are actually hardened gum, slipping my grocery list into my bra and needing an archeological dig to find it, and plenty more.)
Fortunately, just as the words were about to fall from my face, a woman in a white smock poked her head from a doorway: “Come on in, Julie!”
As the ginormously endowed Julie tap-tapped down the hall in her tight skirt and stiletto heels, I stage-whispered to the receptionist: “How many face lifts has she had?”
The receptionist narrowed her eyes, saying nothing. Plastic surgery could fix those droopy lids, I thought. I plowed on. “How much does a face lift cost, and how many plastic surgeons work in this office?”
“You’ve been referred to a dietitian,” she said. “Some patients need to gain weight ... and others (she gave me a hard look) need to lose it.”
“Like Julie in the boob department?” No answer.
“Dietitian” was what she said. But her look suggested I could use a boob-ectomy, gut-ectomy, bum-ectomy, and (yes, sad to say) a tongue-ectomy.
© Nicole Parton, 2019
