Discharge of the Light Brigade

Previously unpublished essay

Back in my ETSU days, I was still riding that odd little wave of being young enough to pass for a med student but credentialed enough to sign my own prescriptions. I had a full panel of patients in an office teeming with young, eager residents and old, peeling laminate, and a growing reputation as the doctor most likely to make his patients laugh, blush, or both.

Also—and this is important—I may have been a newly-minted assistant professor of medicine, but I had no business whatsoever doing female pelvic exams unless it was absolutely, positively unavoidable. Not because I couldn’t, but because I was, well… a bit of a clueless twink in scrubs. Cute, but naive. I made my patients comfortable, sure, but female plumbing made me squeamish. I lived in dread of the day I’d accidentally say something that would land me on a billboard or a witness stand, my sole defense being “But your Honor, I’m GAY!”

So on this particular day, I was covering walk-ins. You never want to cover walk-ins. You might as well hang a sign on your door that says, "Come ye yeasty, come ye phlegmy, come ye festering masses." And lo, they came.

She was not a regular patient of mine—let’s call her Linda—but everyone in the office knew her. Mostly because she had a bit of a… well, a reputation for being sub-hygienic. One of those patients whose arrival you sensed first by nose, then by name.

Sweet mother of Mary.

I took a deep breath, knocked twice on the exam room door, and plunged ahead. “So, ma'am, what brings you in today?" I asked, in my most neutral, nonjudgmental, totally-not-hoping-to-refer-you voice.

She looked at me sort of wall-eyed, like it was a big secret, leaned in a little, and said, "I'm having a discharge."

My soul deflated.

There are very few words in the English language that can turn a chipper morning into a cinematic tragedy faster than “discharge”. Before she could utter another word, I sighed the sigh of a man betrayed by fate, stood up, and muttered, "Hang on, let me get my nurse."

Out in the hallway, I flagged her down with the solemnity of a man requesting a priest.

"It's Linda again,” I whispered. "She says she's having a discharge. Pelvic exam time. Get the gear."

She nodded and peeled off like a trauma nurse prepping for triage with military precision. Meanwhile, I was in the hallway grumbling.

Why me? Why this? What cruel trick of the universe had handed me this vaginal calamity on a Tuesday morning?

I was already regretting every life decision that had brought me to this moment. Just as I was pondering how long it would take for me to enroll in a commercial truck-driving school, my nurse reappeared and announced, poker-faced, "We're ready."

I entered the room to find Linda clutching her paper gown like a woman unsure if she’d wandered into a hostage negotiation. She was staring wide-eyed at the towel-draped Mayo stand—the metal tray of doom—lined with gleaming gynecological instruments bearing seductive names like “speculum”, “tenaculum”, and “curette.”

She appeared hesitant. Alarmed, even.

"Any questions before we get started?" I asked, trying to sound casual, like we were about to discuss the weather and not her potential flora imbalance.

She blinked. "Do we really have to do this?"

"Well," I said, launching into my responsible-doctor voice, "I could just prescribe an antibiotic, but we ought to do a vaginal culture to make sure it's not a resistant organism."

She tilted her head. "For a sinus infection?"

I froze.

"Come again?"

"I said," she repeated, slowly, as if I were the one being strange, "I'm having a nasal discharge."

There was a long pause. Somewhere, a single violin began playing. I set my pen gently on the counter, removed my gloves with the solemn grace of a surgeon exiting the OR, and said, "You know what? I think we can skip the exam... just this once."

My nurse had to excuse herself to the hallway, where she presumably reenacted the opening of The Lion King in laughter. I could hear her wheezing through the drywall.

To this day, I have never lived that one down.

In my defense, the word "discharge" is a loaded one. It carries… implications. You don’t just toss that word out in a medical conversation without setting off a full cascade of alarm bells.

But lesson learned: always clarify the orifice.

Thus the day was saved. Linda got her Augmentin. I got a fresh slice of humble pie. And the entire staff got at least three months of material for the break room.

Even now, almost twenty-five years later, I cannot hear the word "discharge" without a full-body twitch.

And as God is my witness—this actually happened.