Scots_doc

Having felt the femoral pulses on both sides he takes hand out from under your gown and then pulls he gown back up covering you up. He then moves down and starts to examine your legs. He feels his way down your thighs, over your knees, on to your calves which he again feels before moving to your feet. He then assess your joints, moving and flexing your ankles and knees.

On finishing his examination of your legs he asks you to sit up and sort the top of the gown, so you lift yourself up and swing your legs over the side of the table, putting your arms back in the gown and adjusting it to cover your top half. As you are doing so Dr Grant heads over to the counter and makes some further entries in your notes.

Having completed his notes he turns around and walks back to the table, as he approaches he starts to speak “Everything is looking good so far, just a few more things to cover” as he is saying this to you he moves to the foot of the table as he does so you notice him reach out and grab something under the table top, it then becomes clear what he was doing as he pull out and extends a pair of stirrups.

He sits the clipboard back down and returns to the side of the table, he switches off the ECG and removes the electrodes from your body. He gathers the leads up and lays them on top of the machine before pushing the trolley out of the way. “You’re initial ECG looks good, but we’ll do some further ones later on” You just nod, wondering why there is such an interest in your heart.

Your thoughts are interrupted when Dr Grant says “Ok, I’m going to examine your abdomen next, I’ll be starting with taking a listen” as he is speaking to you he is taking the stethoscope from around his neck and putting the earpieces in place. He places the chestpiece on your tummy and listens at various points, initially listening to the blood vessels, the aorta and the iliac arteries, after which he listens to your bowel sounds.

Following his auscultation of your abdomen he then percusses it, listening to the sounds produced, looking for any dullness in the sound. Once he has competed percussion your abdomen he begins to palpate your abdomen. The initial touch of his hand again makes you tense up slightly which Dr Grant notices “Just try to relax your tummy muscles”

He places his hand on your upper abdomen and starts to feel your liver, asking you to take a deep breath in and then let it out, allowing him to get his fingers under your rib cage, letting him feel the top edge of your liver that lies under it. He does the same on the other side when palpating your spleen.

He then moves slightly down your tummy, feeling the next section, using varying degrees of pressure as he feels it. As he is feeling your tummy he slip one hand under you while keeping the other on your tummy to allow him to examine your kidney, he does this on both sides. He works his way down your abdomen, on reaching the gown bunched around your hips he lifts it up, slips his hand under it and feels the rest of your abdomen down to your pubic mound.

He returns to the side of the couch and starts to attaché the ECG electrodes around your chest and breasts, as well as on your wrists and ankles, once he has them all in position he looks at you “Ok, just lie there and relax for a few moments while I run an initial ECG on you.” You think to yourself ‘Relax, yeah right, that’s going to be easy given the circumstances’ but you take another long, slow deep breath and at least try to relax a bit.

Dr Grant returns to the trolley and switches on the ECG machine, it immediately starts to bleep in time to your heart rate and you then realise just how fast it is currently beating. You lie there eyes closed and try some more deep breaths and thinking relaxing thoughts as best you can given all that has happened in an attempt to reduce your heart rate.

As you lie there focussing on the sound of the bleeping, you hearing another sound join noise from the machine, you open your eyes to see that Dr Grant has pressed a button on the machine and it is now printing out a paper copy of the tracing your ECG, he lets it print for a few seconds and then stops it printing an tears off the paper strip. He holds it up to the light and looks at what he printed, he makes a couple of marks on it with his pen and then heads over to his clipboard where he attaches the folded up printout and then starts making some notes.

As he examines your breast you can’t help but again consider that this stranger is touching your breast, albeit everything that he is doing seems to a legitimate breast examination, as your thinking about that you notice that your nipple has hardened, you aren’t sure if that’s due to the low temperature of the room or an involuntary reaction to the doctor touching your breast.

As Dr Grant reaches your nipple he feels his way around it and then gives your hand nipples quick squeeze to check for discharge. H then asks you to switch hands and repeats his examination on your left breast. As he’s doing so you feel yourself drawn to watch what he’s doing no matter how much you try to not think about what he’s doing and trying to focus on what’s going on and how did get out of this predicament.

After completing his examination of your breasts with you siting up, he has you lie down and carries out another breast exam with you lying down. He follows the same pattern, using a circular motion he palpates from your armpit inwards around your breasts to the nipple, again it ends with a pinch of the nipples.

He keeps his hand there for what seems an age, but was probably actually just couple of minutes, making slightly adjustments to the position As he does so the edge of his hand presses harder against your breast, both pushing further into the flesh of your breasts as well as pushing the breast up your chest. He then lifts his hand off of your chest and asks you to roll back onto your left side as he had done earlier, again you do as you’re asked. He then palpates your heart again with you lying on your side.

You feel his hand lift off of your chest again, your brain wondering what is coming next. Dr Grant begins speaking “Ok, if you could sit up again, swing round and face me” you sit up and start to pull the gown back up, you again hear his voice “You can leave the gown for now” You stop and put the back down to your waist where it had been, you sit up and swing yourself around, dangling your legs off the edge of the table.

Dr Grant watches as you sit and turn to face him before starting to speak again. “I’m now going to give you a breast examination, I’m going to start with inspection” Your brain is still trying to process the words ‘breast examination’ when he starts giving you instructions.

“If you could put your arms in the air” You follow his instructions and reach up with both arms, Dr Grant looking at your breasts as you do so, moving his position slightly to allow him to inspect them from various angles. You are then asked to put your hands on your hips and he again carries out the same visual check of your breasts, followed by him asking you to flex your shoulders to try to point your elbows forward before again inspecting your breasts.

You try to force that thought out of your head as Dr Grant continues his cardiac auscultation, moving the stethoscope to Erb’s point, listening there for a bit before proceeding onwards to the tricuspid and mitral regions, listening to each of those in turn. On listening to your mitral region he pushes the chestpiece into the lower edge of your breast. He then listens to your carotid arteries before switching to the bell, listening again to your carotids before repeating his auscultation of your heart.

On completing his auscultation with you sitting up, Dr Grant asks you to lie down where he begins listening to your heart again, repeating what he done with you sitting up, again using both the diaphragm and bell of his stethoscope. You lie there, almost in a trance as Dr Grant goes about his examination, your trance is broken when you hear “Roll on to your left side please” you do as Dr Grant asked, he then moves your arm out of the way and again auscultates your heart before asking you to roll back over on to your back.