Why didn't you say so?

[u/TheNectarineDiaries]

Best medical advice I ever got was to bring a man to your appointments

[u/ExIsStalkingMe]

Person with a penis here: doctors of all genders don't believe ANYONE. I know women deal with a bunch of extra shit, but this one's pretty universal. I spent more than a decade trying to get a diagnosis for my back pain until they found out one of my vertebra had wandered off away from the rest of my spine. I was pretty close to permanently losing my ability to walk for the rest of my life

[u/KinkyBark → u/[deleted]]

Well yeah, if they can’t talk you know they aren’t lying to you. Clearly we should all just go to the doctor then yelp in pain and try to bite them if they touch somewhere that hurts.

[u/braking_zone → u/KinkyBark]

honestly if I’m grumpy enough I just might

[u/kaffeinekittymau → u/braking_zone]

Mood asf

[u/DutchAngelDragon12 → u/kaffeinekittymau]

Fr

[u/ratafia4444 → u/KinkyBark]

And then they'll send you to psych ward without checking for any actual problem. 🤷

[u/Prestigious_Row_8022 → u/ratafia4444]

Aww don’t say that. They’ll get someone to illegally sign for a psych eval that was never done.

[u/_mercybeat_ → u/KinkyBark]

Username check out.

[u/ExIsStalkingMe → u/[deleted]]

I should've growled and bit at doctors more during the process. Might've sped things up

[u/queenmorrow → u/[deleted]]

I worked in veterinary medicine for about 10 years. Seeing the contrast from animal vs people medicine is so frustrating. Every story or experience leads me to believe that we care for our animals more than our people. Not to mention how quick things get done for animals compared to people 💀

[u/AyJay9 → u/[deleted]]

Misogyny gets in the way here too. My vet thought I was hysterical and overreacting to anything wrong with my cat.

Anyway, I ended up cycling between emergency vets and this vet who would be like 'follow up in 6 months!' when the ER vet visits were growing closer together and different ER vets warned me that this was the beginning of the final decline. I trusted our main vet and, honestly, what he was saying was what I wanted to hear, so my cat's kidneys failing only a few weeks after his follow up caught me by surprise. It shouldn't have. I let this idiot gaslight me about my cat's health.

So now I am hyper-vigilant to the possibility that one of my healthy young kitties is secretly dying and I have to take it seriously because no one else will. I rushed to the emergency vet when one coughed... only for him to bring up a hair ball in the car on the way there. Yeaaaah. Cornered between well-earned paranoia and the stereotype that got me treated this way in the first place. Not loving it.

[u/quietfangirl → u/ExIsStalkingMe]

Okay I know that's a terrible injury/condition but I can't help picturing your vertebrae like a bunch of kindergarteners holding onto a rope to stay together and one just lets go and starts wandering away

[u/ExIsStalkingMe → u/quietfangirl]

Honestly, that's a fantastic representation of it. Very heavy Korn video vibes for that one asshole vertebrae who keeps walking away from the rest is a good way to visualize how fucked my back is/was (you don't have a back surgery, you have your FIRST back surgery)

[u/TransGirlIndy → u/ExIsStalkingMe]

Another person with a penis here, who's experienced the medical field presenting as both male and female:

They don't believe anyone, to some extent, but they actively condescend to women in ways they don't to men. When presenting as a "gay man" I was believed probably 70-90% of the time.

I'd say now I'm believed maybe 25% of the time by my male doctors and 50% by my female doctors if I'm lucky.