i wish i could turn off my ovaries

[supercheesegirl]

so here's my pissy ish for the day. it's been over a year since my last gyn exam, so i need to make an appointment. last year, i went to planned parenthood in greensboro, since i obviously could no longer go to family planning in sunbury PA. and so planned parenthood charged me $75 for the visit last year, and i didn't get any of it back from my mom's insurance company. grr. but i think jorn helped me out with it, so that was cool. but this year, i'm on the uncg student health insurance, so i decided i should go to the student health center and it won't cost so much. plus i've heard i can get my birth control pills a few dollars cheaper there. but i keep forgetting to call and make the damned appointment, and this week i have my period anyway so i can't go now. but i called them this morning to make the appointment.

the (sort of rude) woman on the phone asked me if i wanted to have a pap smear done. i'm like, yeah i guess, and she asked me if i've had one done before. well, i don't know what they're doing down there when i get an exam done, so i say, probably. and the woman says that if i've had one done before, they *won't examine me* unless i have the form from the previous exam. she says that they get a lot of girls in there who say they've had a pap before but really haven't, so they need the proof. and i think she just means proof that i've had one, and i've got that on the form planned parenthood gave me when i left there, but then she says they need the actual pap results so they can compare it. so i say, um okay, can i make an appointment anyway and bring the thing with me? and she says that i can, but if i don't bring it they'll make me reschedule. and she gives me their fax number and says that i can have planned parenthood fax it to them.

so i call planned parenthood and ask if they'll fax it. the girl on the phone tells me that either i have to come in there and ask them or i have to go to the uncg health center and fill out an official request form, because they can't release my info without a signature. motherfucker. all right, i'm not going argue with her.

all i wanted to do was just make an appointment and then go get the thing done, and it's this big pain in the ass. planned parenthood didn't ask me if i'd had a pap before when i went to them last year, i know they didn't. and now i have to haul my ass over there when i didn't have any plans to go out that way at all this weekend, and ask them to send a fax to uncg, which will probably either not get sent or which will get lost once it gets there. i'm tempted to just make the appointment and tell uncg i've never had one before (but i don't think that'll work because i'm on the pill right now and that couldn'tve happened unless someone had given me a pap before, right?).

and i'm tempted to just suck it up and go back to planned parenthood, except that $75 is a lot of money that i could get reimbursed to me if i went to uncg. the other thing about planned parenthood is that i can buy my pills in bulk there and get as many packs of pills as i want. on my mom's insurance, i could get one pack per month and only in the last week of my cycle. this will be important next spring, when i move away from here and likely won't have a job or insurance for a while, and thus nowhere to get pills. i don't want to go off my pills when i move to boston, and i don't know if uncg will let me buy a bunch of pills at a time. i would hope that they would (and that's what susquehanna's health center would let you do, according to kari), but it would be just like uncg to be dumb like that. so i don't know what to do. this is important, folks, help me out here.

Comments

[pocketwitch.livejournal.com]

If it were me, I'd think it was worth the money to deal with the people who were more competant. If the people at uncg are that irritating, I wouldn't want them messing with my body.
Plus, Planned Parenthood is a national thing, so even when you move, you could go to another Planned Parenthood, and they'd already have your records, etc.
It seems like it might be less grief in the long run, especially if they can sell you your pills in bulk.
Just my opinion ..

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

apparently the actual medical staff is very competent, or so i've heard. the health center here is way nicer than the one at SU (i never let *them* mess with my body). i don't know if this policy is a normal thing that lots of places do or not. but the front desk ladies have always been sort of rude. and i'm tempted to just do the planned parenthood thing. but it's a lot of money, and it would have to go on my credit card, and it just doesn't seem fair.