So, there I am, in the doctor’s office, because my daughter is having her first major migraine, and we need some medication. This is never my favorite thing to do, and I had to do it on my anniversary, making it doubly fun, the kind of fun you only dream about.

Now, I have migraines and I have migraine medicine, but, trying to be a good mother, I didn’t just pop my meds down my kid’s throat. No, instead I chose to get her to a medical professional to ensure that whatever was popped down her throat was safe for her.

I should have stayed at home and been my own pharmacist, is all I can say.

Having been up all night with her head pains, I was working on a migraine myself by the time we got to the doctor’s office. We were on time. The doctor, shockingly, was not. By almost an hour not.

We got into the examination room and the doctor finally graced us with his appearance. For reasons unknown to me still, he decided that I needed my blood pressure taken. Perhaps because I’m the mother of a teenager, perhaps I just looked peaked from having had no sleep the night prior, perhaps he just likes to perform unneeded procedures.

So, despite my protests, he took my blood pressure. It was low, like a teenager’s he said. He found this shocking -- giving me cause to go with the ‘look like crap’ theory -- and insisted on taking my pressure from the other arm. Still good. He spent much time amazed at my youthfulness, while I kept on mentioning that we were here for my daughter’s migraines, not to see if I was fit and healthy.

He went on discussing my health and welfare, which was touching and all; only we’re both married, he’s not my type, and my only child was pitifully asking for someone to make the pain stop.

In order to get him to focus on the matter at hand, I mentioned that we were hoping to kill two birds with one migraine and at least get the process for the new cervical cancer vaccine rolling for my child. We’d tried to get this done at this practice in the past and had run into some challenges.

Based on additional medical procedures being needed, the doctor finally deigned to notice my actual teenager writhing in agony on the table. “Did you take some of Mom’s migraine medicine?” he asked in a jolly and conspiratorial manner.

She replied in the negative, prompting the doctor to ask me why I didn’t give her my migraine meds. To which I said, “Um, because I’m not supposed to?” He gave some lame reply like, why not since she was in pain, and proceeded to ask her some questions. At which point he ‘discovers’ that she’s on birth control pills. At age 18. Oh my. The shock of it all.

Of course, his partner in the practice, the main doctor, has prescribed them months prior to solve some female issues all male readers will be happy I don’t discuss. But, it’s not a big deal. At least, it wasn’t until I figured out her migraine was from the pills and this doctor got a hold of us.

He starts ranting and raving about how dangerous it is to smoke or drink or look cross-eyed while on the pill. He says that she has no right to have a boyfriend at her age. He says she both should and should not get the cervical cancer vaccine because if she has the vaccine it could kill her but if she doesn’t have the vaccine she could get cancer and die.

I’m sitting there wondering how we got into this particular Loony Tunes skit, when he comes up with my two favorite bits of doctor lore, ever.

After verifying our status as non-Catholics as a way of explaining how the migraine meds he’s going to (finally, after 45 minutes of ranting) prescribe work -- like a communion wafer, but apparently only a Catholic could understand that, so we got a longer explanation -- he proceeded to share the following.

“Nuns never get cervical cancer.” Pregnant pause. “But they do get ovarian cancer.” He looked at us expectantly.

“So,” my daughter snapped, “you’re screwed either way, right?”

This caused him to protest that no, no, no, that’s not what he meant. Though, as near as what I could tell, it’s what he’d said. He went into the abstinence lecture and then, out of a clear blue, suggested this little bit of brilliance.

“You know, what you should do, if you think you want to have sex, you should take up a hobby instead, you should take up stamp collecting.”

Stamp collecting.

Yeah. When the urge to bump and grind hits, there’s nothing like staring at a POSTAGE STAMP to really calm you down. Works better than a cold shower.

My daughter and I stared at each other. “If I had but known,” I managed to get out.

“I’m gonna tell all my friends,” she concurred. “Because we’ve never heard that one before. Ever.”

We left with a prescription for just enough migraine medicine to make it to her appointment with a real doctor. But we did leave richer in knowledge -- the knowledge that some doctors out there make the quacks look good.