We all know the horror stories. Sometimes they happened to us and sometimes to someone else. EMTs refuse to treat a trans woman. Nurses are rude and intentionally use the wrong pronoun. Doctors don't know what to do with you. I still vividly remember that one nurse who treated me like something she'd found crawling around underneath a rock.
Such encounters hurt and fester and can block out the good experiences. I have had many positive encounters with medical personnel, but I tend to forget those experiences and focus on the nasty ones. Not today.
I went to see a specialist a few weeks ago. If you "pass" and have a gender-appropriate name, few doctors actually check your sex marker on the chart. So I figured I could just go in there, act like a regular guy, and never be asked about the big "F" in my records. But still, I wondered if gender issues were relevant to my medical complaint. Should I out myself? I struggled with it for days before. I didn't want to come out, but it might be important. So I wound up just blurting it out matter-of-factly. Surprised even myself.
The guy didn't even skip a beat. He talked about gender and how it tends to figure into cases like mine. As a point of medical relevance, he asked about my hormone regimen, but that was all. We talked for quite some time, and he treated me with perfect dignity and friendliness. I was just another patient--in a good way. All that worrying was for nothing. Sometimes the fretting is justified; in this case, I was just torturing myself. Maybe I'll do it less next time I meet a new doctor. In my neck of the woods, chances are excellent that the next MD will treat me with respect, just as this one did.
Oh, and he was hot, too. A real silver fox.
