Today I had to go to a new “lady doctor”. No one ever wants to go to “that appointment”, much less with a doctor you’ve never seen before. But my primary doctor kept insisting that I get my annual coo-coo-kee-choo* checkup, so I finally made the appointment. (*I call that thang many names… this is just today’s word for it).

I was mildly nervous about the appointment, and I’d never been to that location, so I googled the address, saw the photo of the building, and recognized it, as I’d passed by it many times. I arrived in the parking lot 15 minutes before the appointment, just as I was supposed to do, to fill out paperwork, yada yada yada.

I got out of my car and looked for the entrance.

Straight in front of me was a sidewalk that led to the front of the building, which faced the street. To the right of me was a covered carport type of driveway, with what was probably an entrance door there. I couldn’t see it from where I was standing, but it seemed like it would reasonably be there.

I made my choice and headed for the carport entrance.

As I neared the glass entrance, I saw that there was some sort of folding room divider thing just inside that was obviously obstructing the doorway, so there was no point in me trying to open that door. I turned around, headed back the way I came, then turned up the sidewalk that led to the front door.

The style of the front door stopped me in my tracks. It was a basic metal door that didn’t fit the style of the building at all. I stared at it for a moment, then proceeded to open it.

Once open, I was staring at what looked like a storage room. One foot was inside, one outside, and again, I was just frozen at that spot, not sure what to do.

I turned my head back towards the parking lot and saw a woman in a lab coat coming up the sidewalk towards me.

“The entrance is in the back,” she said.

I closed the door. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think I could go in that door”.

She looked puzzled, but said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just let you in this way.”

By that time, she was next to me at the door, so she opened it (again with a puzzled look on her face), and we walked in. She led me through a labyrinth of hallways, and we passed several offices and rooms that were obviously “behind the scenes” rooms. Eventually, we reached the door to the waiting room / lobby, where I should have entered.

Along the way, I babbled nervously as I described my encounter with the door blocked by the folding room divider. Once again, her face scrunched up in puzzlement, and then her eyes widened as she realized what I was talking about.

“That’s not a door. That’s a window!” she said.

By the time she revealed this information, she was hurrying me along through to the lobby and she went on her way.

I felt like a little old lady who had lost her mind. I couldn’t even tell a door from a window?! What the heck!

I spent the next few minutes filling out the new patient paperwork. When I handed it in to the woman who would be leading me back into the labyrinth to the examination room, she looked at me and giggled.

“I saw you come in with Dr. Bezdek earlier.”

“That was Dr. Bezdek????!!!!”

I was now truly horrified and embarrassed all over again.

A few moments later, when the nice doctor entered the exam room, she smiled and said, “We met earlier. Nice to see you again.”

(Or words to that effect. I was still reeling from the information that I’d shown my stupidity to the nice doctor, so I may have missed a word or two of the conversation).

It’s bad enough having to put on a lime green and white polka-dot “lap drape” with its matching polka-dot “top drape” while a new doctor examines my own labyrinth, but to have it occur while already embarrassed is just more than I can deal with in one day.

Ok, I dealt with it fine, I suppose, but I would have really liked that whole situation to have happened in a completely different way. I’m just not sure which is more embarrassing…me being unable to distinguish between a door and a window, or having to share my polka-dot-covered coo-coo-kee-choo with a new doctor.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably be all “cavalier” about it, but today, I’m a tiny bit mortified.

There is one positive in all this. The doctor informed me later that it was actually a good thing that I’d come through that front door, as it is supposed to always lock on its own when closed, and obviously, that wasn’t working. So I’d just discovered a security breach in their building. Yay me!