Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Having kids is not for the weak of heart or the easily embarrassed. I’m not talking about actually having kids in the sense that they are already part of your life. I’m talking about having kids in the sense of getting them into your life. After my wife and I had been married for several years we decided that it may be in our best interest to seek medical advice regarding our biological ability to have children. We had been doing the standard stuff (watching for the stork, quietly knitting booties, etc.) for some time, but no children had arrived.

Naturally, my wife went first. She got some referrals for a good gynecologist and made an appointment then she dropped the bomb. She asked me to go with her. Being a man (and barely even that), I had very little experience with doctors in general, but as far as I knew I had never been to see a gynecologist before and it was scary. My wife reassured me that we would only be going for a consultation to determine the next steps in discovering our problem. I reluctantly agreed.

On the day of the appointment, I nervously took a back seat in the conversation between my wife and the doctor. They seemed rather comfortable with that approach, so switched from speaking English and began using a dialect of female anatomy that I was unable to interpret. It was near the end of the appointment when I was beginning to think that I would be spared any direct questioning that the second bomb was dropped.

The doctor turned to me with a smile and said, “If we’re going to go to these lengths to test your wife, it seems only natural that we should also test you.”

There was a long silence in the room. Most of my personality had retreated to a safe distant place in a sunny corner of my brain that had no connection with the reality of my current surroundings. What remained was only barely capable of sustaining my autonomous nervous system and my blinking reflex.

The doctor continued, “It’s a simple procedure and it’s all basically done in the lab.”

Having had no formal interaction with a doctor other than childhood immunizations to that point in my life, I did what any normal red-blooded American male raised on extensive episodes of Star Trek would do. I hypothesized that by simple procedure the doctor meant that I would be scanned at a distance by a medical tricorder and that the results would be interpreted by either a Vulcan or an android. This seemed reasonable to me so I acquiesced to the testing.

“Good,” replied the doctor. “We’ll send you home with a container and you can bring in the sample any time. Just call and let us know when you’ll be returning it.”

I smiled and put on my best I-have-no-idea-what-you-mean face and walked out of the office with my wife. She checked out at the desk and retrieved a labeled plastic container which she handed to me as we left the building. Naturally I waited until we were in the car before I asked her to explain the purpose of the container I was holding.

My wife must have been driving on our return trip from the doctor’s office, because after receiving an understanding of my upcoming simple procedure, I lapsed into a state of semi-consciousness that required a great deal of reassurance to overcome.

I spent the next two weeks of my life trying to build a medical tricorder to avoid the upcoming simple procedure, but to no avail. It seemed that no matter how many Star Trek episodes I watched, there just simply wasn’t enough practical information to piece together such a device.

On the day that I had planned to return the container to the lab, I took a sick day from work. I was, in fact, quite ill, but it turns out that it was all psychosomatic. I was fine the next day.

I woke late and called the lab. They gave me some final information. First, I was to present the sample at the lab within sixty minutes of collecting it. Second, I was to keep it warm during transport. I hung up the phone and dry heaved for about fifteen minutes.

As I prepared to go to my car to make the drive to the lab, I slid the container under my left arm pit (the nurse-recommended method for keeping the sample warm) and tried my best to affix my just-going-golfing face before leaving the apartment. As nonchalantly as possible, I speed walked to my car and drove off. To this point, I was quite sure that nobody had spotted the container buried under my shirt.

I drove quickly, but not so quickly as to attract the attention of any law enforcement. I was quite sure that getting pulled over with something reluctantly hidden under my arm would generally be a bad thing. I played the scenario out in my head as I drove:

OFFICER: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

ME: (nervously) “Because I have something concealed in my left arm pit?”

OFFICER: (reaching for weapon) “No... But now that you mention it, what is that?”

ME: “Nothing.”

OFFICER: “Out of the car! Hands on the roof!”

ME: “I’d rather not.”

OFFICER: (shooting)

NEWS ANCHOR: “In a bizarre incident in Chandler this morning, a young man was shot when an officer – assuming the young man had a weapon hidden under his shirt – fired upon him. Later analysis found that the man did not actually have a concealed weapon but was actually carrying an infertility test sample to the lab. He’s dead, but his name was Blake Schwendiman. Did you hear that? Blake Schwendiman was carrying a sample under his arm pit.”

NEWSROOM: (laughter)

I slowed down.

The third bomb dropped on me when I arrived at the so-called lab. In my mind, the lab would be in a hidden location, most likely in a place that was always dark. I expected to drive to a hidden location, press a button on a rusted call box, wait for a squeaking gate to open, put my sample into a secret drop box, and then drive off casually. That’s not how they set it up.

The lab, if it even exists, was not where I actually left the sample. The address brought me right to the front desk of an OB/GYN office. I checked the address again then wept softly as I realized that this was actually the right place. There was no time left to fashion any kind of disguise and in any case, the only things in the car were empty soda cans and a stack of fast-food restaurant napkins. These items weren’t sufficient to create a reasonable disguise.

As a man, it is highly unlikely that you have ever entered the waiting room of an OB/GYN office at any time in your life. Apparently it is not a place that anyone ever expects to see a man enter because when I did, all of the cheerful banter ceased and all eyes were on me. Most of them had a look of he-is-obviously-lost on their face, but all of them were obviously interested in how I would proceed.

It was probably only twelve feet from the door to the front desk, but if memory serves, it took nearly a decade of my life to cross the distance. I was certain that everyone in the room could hear the beads of sweat trickling down my back as I walked, so I tried to muffle the sound by dragging my feet.

When I finally arrived at the desk, I placed my clearly-labeled container as inconspicuously as possible in front of a confused-looking receptionist and tried to smile. Rather than actually announce my purpose, I first tried to use my mind powers to communicate with the receptionist. This either did not work or the receptionist was intentionally sadistic and asked, “Can I help you?”

I tried one more time to use my mind powers to answer, “Please, I’m dropping off a sample. Just take the container, read the label and then discreetly take it to the lab.”

“Can I help you?” she asked again. I noticed the curling of her lip as she glanced at the container. She knew exactly what it was.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I was asked to drop this off for the lab.”

She picked up the container and held it aloft. “Hey, Kathy,” she called out across the room to a nurse who may not have actually been named Kathy. “What are we supposed to do when we receive a ...”

Upon pronouncing the next word which I shall omit from the retelling of these events (which ironically is a word that rhymes with squirm), the entire room erupted in muffled laughter and humorous commentary. That moment in my life was the only time that I expect I would have actually been more comfortable if I had been providing a stool sample.

For what it’s worth, the results of the testing were not positive, but receiving that information was far less traumatic than the process of obtaining it.