Let me start by saying how grateful I am to have finally found a Primary Care physician. Not everybody has one, or can afford one. My only quibble is how he got grossed out by my body. Like, a lot.

He's totally friendly and personable, which put me at ease as the exam got underway. But I assumed any licensed MD would have had someone tell them they shouldn’t examine the inside of your ear with that little scope and say “Ewwwwwwwwww!!” I flinched, but he assured me there was nothing unusual in there, just “your standard mass of brown ick.”

It was good to hear the inside of my mouth also looked “healthy, but super grody, you know, like mouths are.” And interesting to notice that what he saw gave him a full body shiver that lasted about fifteen seconds.

He seemed fine when he listened to my heartbeat and took my blood pressure. He might have muttered something about being relieved that those things don't make him look at the “filth inside.”

I was a little surprised when he ushered me into the “downstairs” portion of the examination, as he called it, by saying “Drop trou, buckaroo!” And I definitely cocked an eyebrow when he donned a rubber glove, cupped his hand under my balls and said “Gah! Yuck! Barf!” I assume that means “cough, please?”

He warned me I was going to feel a little something in my “chocolate starfish.” And while the sensation of getting my prostate checked wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t as off-putting as all the retching I could hear him doing back there. Maybe a little crying too. But that might have just been the way a person's sinuses loosen when they're sick to their stomach. The repeated, “Oh God” I could hear him whisper might apply either way.

He had a sheen of sweat on his forehead when he stood up and told me he’d need a blood sample. His breathing really sped up as his nurse inserted the needle in my arm, and I’m pretty sure I heard him gag. The blood was filling up the syringe just fine until he passed out, knocking us all onto the floor. It took a few minutes for the nurse and I to put the equipment we’d smashed back together. No harm done, although that scale is probably toast. Not to mention that jar of tongue depressors. And the canister of liquid nitrogen.

While I waited for the nurse to revive him, I couldn't help but notice that the posters on the walls showing the inner workings of different parts of the body were covered with hygiene paper from the examination table, masking taped in place. Someone had drawn cartoon “disgust” faces on them with a black marker. I was going to ask about those, but the doctor got my attention back by yanking on my pant leg a bunch of times.

Now, I’ve been given recommendations on how to stay healthy before, but this was the first time the doctor held his head between his knees as he did it. All the stuff he said made sense, and he really brought it home by vomiting into the wastebasket afterward.

When he curled up in a ball I figured he was done with me. I heard him muttering about how all he ever wanted was to be able to get ladies to take off their shirts and let him see their boobies, and that it just wasn't worth it, given that he had to deal with all the guck oozing out of their holes.

I figured that was my cue to tiptoe out.

Anyway, I’m sure it’ll go better when I come back for a follow-up next week to get the results of, as he called it, my “rank, nasty, swamp-donkey blood work.”