This morning, stabbing pain in my lower abdomen woke me up at 6AM. Okay, time to schedule a doctor’s visit to check this out.
I reached the appointment scheduler for Imperial Center Family Medicine, and was “scheduled” as a “stand by” patient for Dr. Torrey at 1:15.
“It might be a long wait, as we really don’t have an opening. We’re going to be hoping for a cancellation or someone finishing up early.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
I arrived at about 1:10, and fired up my laptop. They have free wireless access in the lobby, and in the examining rooms.
While waiting in the lobby, I finished up my school blog entry for today, and posted it to the class website.
While waiting in the examining room, I downloaded a podcast.
It wasn’t at all a long wait, and the diagnosis was: 95% sure it’s a pulled abdominal muscle, but let’s do a CT scan just in case, since you have no recollection of anything you could have done in the past two or three days to strain this muscle. I’m going to have you give me a urine sample on the way out, too, and give you a script for a refill on that 800 milligram Ibuprofen you have.
I’m going to talk about the “urine sample process” in technical communication terms.
On the wall above and behind the toilet is a poster that reads, “Six Steps to a Clean Urine Sample.”
As I’m waiting for my “stream” to start, I have the cup “to the side,” as step four directs me to “start urinating first, and then move the cup under the stream.”
I’d skimmed past step three as I’d noticed that it had a derivative of the word “vagina” in it. With time to kill now, I went back and read it in its entirety:
3. Use wipe to carefully clean your entire vaginal area wiping front to back. Be sure to wipe well between all the folds and creases.
Okay. Stop the presses. All communications should consider audience, context, and purpose.
| First of all, let’s think about the audience for this poster: I think that, by this very explicit step number three, it’s safe to assume that the audience is women.
Secondly, with our audience now known, let’s think about the context in which this poster will be viewed: Shouldn’t it be on the wall across from the toilet? I’ll give them credit for purpose — everyone wants the cleanest sample possible. I guess. |
Just one last thing before I leave this item number three. There’s something just a little too graphic about it — something that puts it “over the edge” for me. And, I think it’s the word all.
“…all the folds and creases.” Is that word really necessary in that statement? I mean would most women, say, just do 8 of the 10 folds or creases? It seems to me that “all” would just be understood. I mean, must we belabia the point?
The fifth step says to “pull the container away before the stream stops.”
These fourth and fifth steps really make for a “messy” way to get a “clean” sample — at least as far as the side of the container goes.
Class was interesting today. Today’s presenters did a great job, and we learned about The Palace, ActiveWorlds, and Habbo Hotel.
I had dinner at Two Guys, and had the “Monday Special,” which consisted of Lasagna and a salad for $6.80. I brought half of the lasagna home for another meal tomorrow.
I stopped at the Harris Teeter at Cameron Village on the way home, and bought Portuguese Rolls(!), some shaved honey-baked ham, and coffee.