Call me maybe | Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Quarantine here.

Reporting after a telemedicine appointment with my OB/GYN.

This has to be a first.

How you do FaceTime with a gynecologist?

Very carefully?

After all, it’s not your face you’re timing with.

VaginaTime!

I don’t know where to begin with this story.

Quarantine creates the craziest situations, and that’s if we’re lucky.

By lucky, I mean alive and well.

I’m not kidding about that.

I know how lucky I am.

But I want to cheer you up during these times, which brings me to my annual OB/GYN exam.

By way of background, I was going to cancel the appointment using the pandemic as an excuse.

In my own defense, I’m in lockdown.

Even if I weren’t, I might find a lesser excuse.

Who looks forward to a date with a speculum?

By the way, that’s a perfect description of my second marriage.

Anyway, I called the doctor’s office and told the nurse I wanted to cancel, but she said I could have my appointment over the phone.

Believe it or not, there’s an app for that.

It’s called Blue Jeans.

I guess Panties was already taken.

Or Va-Jay-Jay.

Or Va-Yay-Yay, to communicate the sheer excitement that every woman has about her annual.

Anyway, when the nurse told me I could do the appointment remotely, I didn’t understand.

I mean, it’s an exam.

I didn’t even want to think about how close I would have to hold the phone.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Get it right out of your mind.

Also, my aim is terrible.

Most of the time, I can’t even keep my face on the phone screen. Usually I get the overhead lights, blinding whoever I’m talking to, or my arm gets tired holding the phone at a flattering angle.

Which, for middle-age women, means high up.

The best way to photograph us is from a mountaintop.

The next person who climbs Everest should take a picture of me.

I explained this to the nurse, and she said, “You don’t need a physical exam, since this is not a Pap smear year.”

So we have that to be grateful for.

2020 sucked, and 2021 is not a Pap smear year.

The nurse said, “All you have to do is have a conversation with the doctor, unless you’re having a problem.”

I told her I was dead below the waist, but it wasn’t a problem.

She laughed, which I appreciated.

That’s me, comic relief for gynecologists.

So the nurse confirmed my telemedicine appointment for 10:40 a.m., which unfortunately would cut off the end of my Zoom yoga class.

Now there’s a pandemic problem.

Or a quarantine quandary.

If you take yoga, you know the end of class is the best part, because that’s when you go into Shavasana Pose.

I call it Nap Pose.

It’s basically lying on your back and imagining clouds.

Nap Pose is my favorite.

In fact, I have been known to fall asleep in Nap Pose.

That’s how good I am at yoga.

When I snore, it’s Nirvana.

I didn’t want to miss Nap Pose, and it occurred to me that since it was a virtual yoga class on my laptop and a virtual gynecology appointment on my phone, I didn’t have to miss anything.

Yay, quarantine!

So during the yoga class, when it was time for the gynecology appointment, I logged onto Blue Jeans on my phone. A banner popped onto the phone screen, which read, Your physician is with another patient right now and will be on shortly.

In other words, I was in the virtual examining room, waiting in my paper gown, which was supposed to be open in the front or the back, I can never remember which.

By the way, I was on mute in my Zoom yoga class.

So nobody knew I was taking them to the gynecologist.

Or taking my gynecologist to them.

It wasn’t a Pap smear year, so no biggie.

So there I was, in Humble Warrior Pose on my laptop, waiting for the gynecologist on my phone, and my yoga class got all the way to Nap Pose and the gynecologist still hadn’t appeared, so I started to drift off to sleep.

I woke up to somebody saying, “Lisa, Lisa?”

It was the gynecologist.

I jumped up, hustled out of the room, and told the gynecologist I have no problems with my vagina.

Also my vagina has no problems with me.

We’re getting along great.

We stay out of each other’s way.

Honestly, we could probably communicate better.

But one of us is the silent type.

Look for Lisa’s first historical novel, “Eternal,” coming on March 23. Also look for Francesca’s debut novel, “Ghosts of Harvard,” on sale now.