Busted knees, three doctors and a dream

“The doctor will see you now.”

These are words I dread hearing, more than I dread… “The doctor will see you now.”

These are words I dread hearing, more than I dread presidential elections or getting fat or zombies.

When you’re freakish like I am, going to the doctor isn’t a fun visit with the family physician, but a painful process involving being prodded and wearing hospital gowns that reveal my peculiar taste in underwear.

I busted my knees when I was 17 years old. I was underweight, no bigger than a minute, as my musical theater teacher — the woman who gave me an A as an incentive not to sing — told me.

My parents, not knowing what to do with a 17-year-old who couldn’t walk, did what middle-class parents of exasperating teens do: They took me to see a specialist. And another. And another.

The first was a physician’s assistant, who asked not about my knees but whether I ate breakfast. Then, after ushering my mother out of the room, she inquired, following a moment of solemnity, if I were sexually active.

“What does being sexually active have to do with having bad knees? … Oh. Right,” I said. I assured her I didn’t have what I’ll call “third-base syndrome.”

The next doctor wasn’t interested in whether or not I was sexually active. In fact, she wasn’t interested in my knees or even me at all. After asking about my family history, from my grandfather’s bouts with manic depression to my aunt’s bad dye-jobs, she arrived at a simple diagnosis: I would have to see another doctor.

Doc No. 3 was a little unusual. After I spent 45 minutes paging through Ebony magazine in his cushy waiting room, my mother and I were escorted back into the inner sanctum — the exam room.

There on the walls, hanging like diplomas, were framed enlargements of X-rays of various joints, most autographed by well-known local athletes. “Thanks Doc!” read one, from a soccer player glad to have her ankle back and her ACL mended.

Then the good doctor arrived. If Gene Kelly’s character in “On the Town” and a U.S. marine had had a love child, it would be this guy. He had a crew cut and was wearing a bowtie, seersucker suit, a braided leather belt and blue suspenders. Keeping his striped pants up, it seemed, was a priority.

Mercifully, he didn’t ask if I were having sex or if my third cousin on my mother’s side had any gastrointestinal problems. Rather, after some cursory poking at my knees, he diagnosed me with a condition — acute tendinitis! — and sent me home with prescriptions for anti-inflammatories and physical therapy.

So all was well and good in the land of Syd. The peasants rejoiced at being able to get around without being carried, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Except not. Upon arriving at Pitt, it became clear that my new enemy was Student Health. My first few trips there were relatively uneventful. After fending off repeated inquiries if I were pregnant or syphilitic, the doctors dispensed pills and sent me on my merry way.

That is, until last summer. That’s when I encountered another doctor, whom I’ll call Mr. Whitecoat. At first, Whitecoat seemed nice, helpful, even normal. But then he said my diagnosis was all wrong, and after several trips to the radiology department — fun with increased cancer risk! — he came to a clear conclusion.

My problems didn’t come from acute tendinitis; my problems came from the fact that I was a zebra. A zebra. Striped, runs in packs, often featured in filmstrips about the Serengeti. Zebra.

Well, after my eyebrows had shot so far up they threatened to merge with my hair, he explained. Zebra was the oh-so-scientific name his people — doctors — had given to my people — Eastern European Jews.

Apparently, it means we’re weird, and that all the conditions we have — diabetes, arthritis, depression, gefilte fish addictions — were the cause of us coming from insular communities where everyone married his or her cousin.

Whitecoat sent me to the arthritis clinic. An hour wait in the exam room and an embarrassing dance in my hospital dressing gown later, I had yet another diagnosis.

It seems that, rather than sex, family, tendinitis or more family, I had hyper-flexible joints, which might make me good at yoga, or popular with the fellas, and also gave me bad knees.

I thanked the doctor, and, heading into the Oakland smog to get some carryout, I found I have only one conclusion about this mess: Never has a Jewish girl complained so much about being felt up by so many doctors.

Wish Sydney a happy 21st birthday at sbergman@pittnews.com. No doctors please.