I recently went to the doctor to see about a perpetually swollen lymph gland—the one commonly misnamed “tonsils.” For cultural sake, I’ll keep referring to this gland as my tonsil as my doctor did during my visit.* The lymph glands, as part of our endocrine system, help trap dead tissue, dead blood (so gross) and various debris floating around inside of our bodies and then filters all the chaff out of our bodies. What I didn’t know is that, if I had to be relieved of this particular gland due to its as-of-late proclivity towards constant, painful inflammation, it wouldn’t affect my overall health. Seems processing toxins out of our bodies is an important enough function that I’d want all glands on deck, but apparently I’m not a doctor. Jury is still out on whether I need to be relieved of this troublesome gland, although my doctor assured me “probably not.”

As they typically do at doctor offices when the nurse asks you to “follow me out back”** after a door somewhere in the waiting room opens and a head pops out and they say your name, my weight and height were recorded as well as my temperature and blood pressure. All very typical stuff.

But this day ended up being decidedly not typical.

Everyone, on this day, I learned something about myself I feel like I kinda should have known after, literally, all of these years. Maybe, a long time ago, I knew this information about myself. Maybe I had the correct information at one point, but somehow, the accurate information was lost to me. I wonder, to lose this information, was it gradual, or did it happen all at once one day? I’m just not sure. But I will say, I am still processing what this could mean about myself that I just didn’t know this piece of somewhat prosaic, yet kinda important information. The first question I asked myself, in the same tone as a friend of mine from Maine, who one day, years ago, asked me the same question*** with incredulity, “what is wrong with me?!!” I think all of you probably have this piece of information about yourselves pretty down pat. So, truly, I’ve been wondering, what is wrong with me.

So here I am, after obediently following the nurse out back, my weight is recorded and my height is recorded. My weight hasn’t changed that much since roughly college. My height hasn’t changed since, what, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade? At what age do we reach our permanent height?

The nurse doesn’t tell me how much I weigh—nothing to report there, but she does, interestingly, tell me my height. You’d think, with one having the potential of varying widely and the other not, that she would tell me my weight, or at least announce it to the room as she recorded it like she did my blood pressure and temperature. (Are you talking to me, or the room?) I’m guessing she relayed the information to me verbally for one of two reasons: since I was facing in the direction of the scale, I could observe how much I weighed so there would be no reason to say out loud about me, what I can clearly see.  And therefore, perhaps it’s because I had my back turned to the “height measuring rod”**** while she recorded my height, she felt inclined to tell me. But why verbalize this, why tell me something I obviously already know? I’m not at an age where shrinking height is a concern. I was just so confused.

In all the visits I’ve made over the years to the doctor’s— and to be fair, it hasn’t been that many times, because, having taken one of two stances: 1) that hybrids are above average healthy individuals and rarely need the services of a doctor, or, 2) to just shake it off and it will probably go away—but in all my visits, I honestly don’t recall anyone actually telling me my height.

It is probably true that, over the years things have changed within the setting of a doctor visit and this brings me to my second guess as to why this nurse decided to tell me how tall I am. I surmise that perhaps this verbal announcement of what should be commonplace data is part of a growing culture of “patient interaction” and “socialization with patients” brought on by the over-correction to the advancement of electronic medical records in the exam room***** as they replaced paper ones. Basically, electronic records means computers in exam rooms, which means doctors and nurses look at screens more than they look into the eyes of those individuals they are examining. It’s hard to talk to your nurse or doctor about something personal if they’re staring at a computer. Using computers during visits was new, uncharted territory just several years ago and overtime, the jury came in: doctors and patients don’t like the cold computer sitting between them. So, perhaps this nurse was just being chatty…about a fixed and benign piece of data.

I was so taken aback by her announcement of my height because, this information is so constant, I’ve even had nurses just ask me my height to spare them the task of having to take my height.

I was in the process of thinking to myself, pre-coffee so therefore probably kind of snarkily, I will admit, “why is she telling me my height when—”

I stopped.

I wish I could convey to all of you the number of things that went through my mind in one instant at this very moment. I know our brains and our bodies do incredible things to protect us from the sheer amount of stimulation out there, and without these protections at that moment, to keep me from imploding from stimulation overload, I’m not sure what would have happened.

On the instances when I’m asked to provide my height to spare my nurse the trouble of measuring me, my answer is of course always the same. I am five three and a half exactly. For nurses, this information is usually recorded without ceremony, typically without interest and almost always without comment. Sometimes I get a smile out of a nurse when I declare the half inch, and they respond factually, “So you’re five three.”

In my day-to-day life where people take slightly more interest in me than the nurses of doctors’ offices, many times, to my bit of sinful pride, people will comment, “five three? You seem taller than that…maybe it’s because of your personality.” If you’ve ever been in a conversation with me about my height, you know how I lovingly reply, “yeah, I get that a lot.” I love that people think I’m taller than I am because it makes me feel like people really know me and my personality. The people in my life know that I’m a lot. I talk fast, I rarely sit down, I get excited about…everything. and, all of that energy sun bursting about often feels out-sized to my friends, and I appreciate that…when it’s a good thing.

Sometimes, I remind people about the half inch. It’s important when you’re short to take all that you can vertically get. Exactly half an inch isn’t insignificant. I’m not like five three and two millimeters trying to eek up to the next half inch.

The nurse tells me my height and I stop mid-step off the scale like the hyperbolic person I have a penchant for being.

I said, “excuse me, what?”

The nurse repeated herself: “You’re 5 foot 4 and a half inches tall. ”

“Really?”

“Uh huh, can you sit down over here please?” And the nurse directs me to a chair to take my blood pressure.

I start to laugh pretty hard, shaking my head. The nurse isn’t overly interested in what’s given me the morning guffaws. But I press on because, as an extrovert and an external processor, I need to talk this out.

I told her, I am almost 40 years old—yes, information she also has, and I can only hope she was thinking snarkily about me, “why is she telling me stuff I already know?”—and this whole time, I thought I was five foot three and a half.

As I was laughing into the room and trying to get the nurse to talk to me about this revelation in the way that I wanted, instantaneous to all of that began a new existential moment in my life: how did I not know my own height? I’m shocked by myself that I was so wrong, and for so long. And, I’m weirdly in awe of myself for pulling off this mistake for SO LONG. Years. And years.

She proceeds to take my blood pressure, after asking me a couple times to uncross my legs that I do out of habit and now because of an increase in energy as my brain runs through this new bit of information and shrugs slightly amused and says, “well, you just gained an inch, that’s better than the other way around.”

I pause at this comment. True. We do value height in America, this is true. And onward with the growing existential dialogue I’m now having in my head, instead of, preferably, my nurse.

I state on my driver’s license that I am 5’4″ and, whenever I’ve gotten a new license due to losing a wallet or renewal, I always have this Catholic guilt****** swirling through me. Should I really say that I’m 5’3″? Those nurses said I’m 5’3″…Is it okay to round up that much? And now that I’m 5’4.5″ can I guiltily round up to 5’5″? Five foot five, wow, that’s really tall.

Whether I wanted to continue in vain to get the nurse to interact with me on this topic doesn’t really matter because she has stepped out of the room, her role complete, and I’m alone, waiting for the doctor. I’m baffled and amused and I’m firing off many questions at once, which is a lot easier to articulate in your head because they’re just there, like breathing, as opposed to laboriously having to articulate them to, in this instance, a very uninterested other person, one at a time.

How could I have possibly gone this long in my life and not known how tall I am? Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd? If it does strike you as odd, and you feel the need to tell me, please do it gently, over dinner. Maybe right before the wait staffer asks if we want to hear the dessert menu, or if we want coffee. I’ll probably get a coffee, and if it’s at the kind of restaurant I like to patron it’ll probably come in a super cute, tiny French press.

Do you know how tall you are?

When I tell people that I’m 5’4.5″, what if people stop saying, “hmmm, wow, you seem taller”? What if, poof, just like that, I don’t seem taller but I seem like I am the height I say I am, and after all these years, there’s no longer comment about my height? Does this mean my personality isn’t punching outside of my very stable weight class anymore? Gosh, that sounds awful. And if that is the case, if I look and act like my height, does this mean that now, like Yo Yo Ma, I’m actualized? I just…am?

Or, like the 3 or 4 people pointed out whom I talked about my new life contemplation while looking for sympathy, searching for answers, fishing for compliments and reassurance that I am still, indeed a firecracker friend, I have something else altogether to consider. To be fair, I probably didn’t consider this point because I’m still processing and in this beginning processing phase, to be honest, the point was too practical and not hyperbolic enough to register with me. Regardless, it is a noteworthy point for which I was immediately annoyed at myself for not thinking about: “Maybe she was wrong when she measured you.”

“You think?”

“It could happen. You should measure your height when you have a minute.”

To this suggestion, that I received several times from my loved ones, I laughed, scrunched up my nose even and said, “why would I do that?”

*I asked my doctor, knowing this gland isn’t a tonsil, “so, what is it called?” And she said, “it’s just a gland.” I have to think, since we humans are so keen on naming things, that this particular gland has a name…Again, I’m apparently no doctor, but I know this thing isn’t just called “gland.” Do you know what it’s called?

**For those of you who know me, and those of you who don’t, you’ll soon find out: I am a) not an anxious person. Per my last blog post, I’m very fortunate that the amount of anxiety and stress that I do have in my life is manageable; b) I can get lost very easily. I can get lost in one room I often “joke.” When I am late to gatherings, movies, meetings, weddings…it’s often because somewhere along the way, I got lost trying to go from point a to point b. Not all of the time, but getting turned around, rerouted, confused as to which turn I’m supposed to take…any number of these scenarios, and often more than one together, intertwine through my locomotion. So while I do not identify as an anxious person, I do experience a perceptible uptick in anxiety when I have to follow the nurse “out back” because I know that often, after your visit concludes, they don’t accompany you back to the waiting room from whence they plucked you. After your time with the doctor is over, you’re on your own to get from the hallway from which you’ve just been ushered after being escorted out of your exam room. There could have been a couple hallways you had to navigate while making your original trek to the exam room, there could have been a couple of turns… And, for the more complicated office setups, there could be a totally different desk “out back” that you need to visit before going back to the waiting area. I find those setups particularly difficult because, the longer I have to talk to this particular set of people, the foggier my memory becomes as to how to get back to the front. Did I just go around in a circle? Do I have to completely backtrack or is there a secret door I haven’t seen yet that is probably perfectly obvious to everyone else that leads to the waiting area? It’s distressing.

***It’s an interesting day when you’re just doing your just talking, probably pontificating on something and your friend record scratches the conversation to a hold to ask, “What is wrong with you?” Wherever things go after that, it’s probably interesting.

****I definitely looked up the different parts of a physician’s scale and learned that’s what that part of the scale is called. And I didn’t know the kinds of scales that measure your weight and height were called physician’s scales, I just called them “the scale at your doctor’s office”.

*****I found this article on the topic, and definitely remember an NPR segment on it as well. Since this particular blog is not always statistically sound (please see my last post about lying), you’ll just have to trust me that there is a correlation between patient interaction with doctors with the advent of using computers to track medical records during visits.

******I didn’t grow up Catholic, I am not Catholic, but I like to co-opt Catholic guilt about really banal things. It makes me happy.