| Subject: RT at the doctor's in the early 1970s |
Author:
Lisbeth
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Date Posted: Monday, October 16, 2023, 12:54: pm
The last time I had my temperature taken rectally at the doctor's office was in the early '70s when I was 12. One fall morning I woke up with a tickle in my throat and a feeling of malaise. By late morning that tickle had turned into a searing pain and the malaise had given way to aches, chills, and overwhelming fatigue. The school nurse took my temperature (orally), and it turned out I had a fairly high fever--102.5. My mother arrived shortly after and told me she'd already phoned the pediatrician's office to tell them we'd be there in a half hour for a "sick" visit.
My pediatrician--for whatever reason--had a policy that every child and preadolescent there for a "sick" visit had their temperature taken rectally, no questions asked. For someone between preadolescence and adolescence, as I was at the time, it was generally a judgment call. I have no idea if this was a "normal" policy in that era, that was simply the way it was at my doctor, who was a good family friend. At the time, I dreaded "sick" visits because I found the whole rectal temp taking ordeal so terribly embarrassing. And if I already felt intensely ashamed at the age of 6 or 7, you can imagine what it was like when I was 10 or 11. I would often try to conceal from my mother for as long as I could when I felt I was coming down with something just to avoid the visits to the doctor. (At home, by the time I was 7 or 8, my mother generally took our temps orally, and though, if she suspected a high fever, she would sometimes resort to rectal, I never found it as humiliating, maybe because it felt so much more private.) And I would often try to pretend I was at the doctor for a "well" visit even when I was sick, hoping that this way the other kids and mothers in the waiting room wouldn't know what was going to happen to me when I stepped into the examining room.
So I think one of the reasons this "sick" visit when I was 12 left such an impression is that I was old enough that I wasn't certain how my temp would be taken. I remember sitting in the chair, waiting to be called in, going through the motions of flipping through a teen magazine, while inside I was completely fixated on the question of whether, in a few moments, I would be able to stay sitting upright on the exam table for the whole visit--with maybe my blouse removed, or even my jeans, but with the thermometer under my tongue; or whether I would find myself in the position I had occupied so many times previously at Dr. Dean's--face down on the exam table, pants removed entirely and panties no higher than my ankles, my bare front resting on the crinkly paper while my bare rear faced upward, a thermometer nestled between my two bottom cheeks.
"Lisbeth, you can come in now, we're ready for you." I can still see Nurse Margaret as she emerged from the exam room, looked me straight in the eye, and in a gentle yet firm voice told me to enter. I had been treated by Nurse M for years, and everything about her was classic nurse--old-fashioned, crisply dressed all in white, totally in charge. As always, my mother accompanied me in--the office encouraged it. No one would know it, but my flushed face wasn't simply a symptom of my illness, I was anticipating shame as the moment of truth drew closer at hand.
Yet I felt some hope when Nurse M told me to hop up on the exam table but didn't immediately follow that with an order to disrobe from the waist down. She began asking me questions about what brought me in, though my mother did the answering. "Hmm...sounds like it might be strep, we've seen a lot of cases of that these last few weeks." "Yes," my mother added, "and the nurse at school said she was running a high fever too, over 102." "Oh," Nurse M answered, "that is high...hmm...." And then there was this pause--I can distinctly remember it--as Nurse M looked at me, then at my mother, and then at the counter where the two thermometers (glass, of course) rested, each in its own little flask of alcohol, one clearly marked ORAL, the other RECTAL. Why this took on the trappings of such a major decision--who knows? Maybe it was all in my mind, though I can't help but feel that Nurse M got a little charge from the drama of it all.
"Well, then, before I call in Dr. Dean to examine Lisbeth, let's check that temp again, this time, rectally." To me, it was as if she had said, "this time, RECTALLY." All I could hear was the echo of that word, rectally, rectally, rectally. "All right, Lisbeth, it's been a while, according to your charts, but I'm sure you remember what to do now. Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to get so red in the face, you know this is no big deal." But for me, at age 12--with little breast buds in place and faint blond hairs appearing down there--it felt like a very big deal. And yet, I was a very obedient girl by nature, and didn't think of protesting. I remember standing up in a daze to take my bell bottoms off and give them to my mother, then jumping back up on the table with my panties still on and lying down, as I was supposed to, on my tummy. Not wanting Nurse M to do it, I lifted up slightly and lowered my panties to just below my bottom. "Let's get these a little more out of the way," Nurse M predictably said, and pulled them down to my ankles.
And then, the ritual of the rectal temp taking began. Nurse M (whom I could see preparing thanks to a mirror on the wall next to the exam table) had a particular way of doing things--the way they teach (or taught) you in nursing school, I guess: she would put a healthy dollop of lubricant jelly on a tissue, then take the thermometer out of the vial, shake it down, slather the lubricant from the tissue on it, then come to the table, separate my bottom cheeks with her left hand, plunge the thermometer into my rectum with the other, and then release my buttocks and allow them to close around the thermometer. One thing I distinctly remember from this time is that for whatever reason, Nurse M didn't just leave it there (as I often recall her doing) but actually kept her right hand on my bottom and the thermometer between her fingers.
Where it stayed for the next five minutes. I so vividly remember the senses and smells of that rectal temp--that indescribable feeling of a thing being where a thing usually wasn't, the unbearable greasiness left behind after the thermometer was removed, which evoked memories of the shame caused when I didn't wipe well enough after a BM and for the rest of the day felt (and saw in my panties the telltale signs) of a dirty bottom; the cloying odor of a rectal temp, with its mix of alcohol and jelly together with the sweat from the anus and the traces of stool from the rectum. The embarrassment at being treated like a little child, facing down while the adult took my temperature and the two grown-ups in the room talked as if I wasn't even there. The feeling that my rear end at that moment wasn't an "ass" or a "butt" or even a "tush" but a "tushie." All the thoughts that ran through my mind the whole time of what would this girl or more often boy in my class think if they could see me now--and how everyone in the waiting room outside must know what's happening to me at this moment.
There's more to say about this experience--it turned out the rectal temperature wasn't the last time my "tushy" was at the center of things on that visit--but I've written enough. Helpful to unburden myself of some of this.
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