12mo ago

Intersex people of Lemmy, do you feel like you get/got adequate healthcare for your sex disorder?

For me absolutely not. I am only diagnosed as "sex disorder", got bad blood results, and I get pushed around, because no one feels qualified to deal with me. I feel like people treat me like a zoo attraction. I had psychiatrists ask me to show them my body and touch me, because they were curious. Doctors get angry with me for not yet being diagnosed, question why I'm not yet diagnosed, don't diagnose me themselves, and then end up telling me they're not qualified enough. And then the next doctor it happens again. They don't even do new tests, they do the exact same tests, then get the same results, then act angry and tell me to find a more specialized doctor. I was told by multiple ones I need a brain scan to see if there's something off there, but then no one forwards me to one. My blood results suggest I will or actively am losing bone density.

I don't want anyone's advice or input on my case tbh. I'm tired of people playing Dr House with me.

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I don't think there are a ton of other intersex people on Lemmy.
But yeah, I don't think I've had things handled adequately at all. I also have been ping-ponged around between doctors who "don't know how to treat me." They are at least professional enough not to ask to see or touch my body, but are generally obsessive about doing weird transmed shit and unnecessarily demanding every possible blood test or genetic test that exists every time I need a refill of even entirely irrelevant medications. No, you do not need to do a full gene sequence to refill the anxiety meds I've been on for 15 years.
My strategy has been to just get a bunch of different doctors, each of whom only treat the exact thing that they're specialised in, rather than one doctor that tries to do everything.
I also had bone density issues due to low sex hormone levels. I was able to get that handled by getting a referral to an endocrinologist who regularly works with trans people. They still want blood work, but at least they're competent.
- An endocrinologist wanting blood work sounds like the most normal thing ever tho hahaahah
  
  Yeah, the Endo wanting blood work is basically the only doctor for whom it actually makes sense in my life.
  
  Honestly, not that it makes it ok, but thinking from a doctor’s perspective… They’re just people right? They had to study what they had to study (aka the most common things), and they are just workers. People see them as godly know-it-alls and expect them to simply be perfectly capable all the time.
  So when encountering something they don’t know how to deal with, it makes sense they just ask for random tests and act like they know what’s happening. It’s what everyone expects of them!
  It sucks, but it’s systemic right? It’s not really about them being arrogant or anything. Not that doctors are not arrogant a lot of the time… But yeah… idk what I’m talking about.
  Just also, med school is fucking insane. Only the most broken-brained and psychopathic people can get through most of the time. We literally filter out all the normal people during it. No wonder most doctors are crazy.
  
  When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras.
  Far too many doctors working with intersex and trans patients will assume that all medical conditions are related to the patient's trans or gender diverse status. This phenomenon is known as Gender-related Medical Misattribution and Invasive Questioning or "trans broken arm syndrome"
  It becomes largely impossible to convince doctors otherwise once they make this false connection, and it also ties in deeply with being dismissed as a patient. It's why so many become serially turfed as they're handed off to other doctors and practices who all "don't know how to treat you."
  And how could they be expected to treat you? My god, a novel condition never before seen by science that causes arms to spontaneously break because the person they're a part of is trans? Or Crohn's that's purely caused by using they/them pronouns? None of these are actually related, but doctors will regularly convince themselves they are, demand to run tons of unnecessary tests or pursue absurd diagnostic treatment paths and then flog off the patient when (not if) the testing or treatment doesn't give them the impossible magical mystery explanation they're looking for.
  The solution is for doctors to be better educated and to stick to the KISS principle rather than looking for an interesting case study or an excuse to prescribe conversion therapy.
  
  Thanks for that. As a cis person this was very helpful. Indeed that is not my experience and perhaps I was giving doctors too much credit. And still seeing them too much as “doctors” and not just people as I said earlier. And people are transphobic/have prejudices towards intersex people. It makes sense that the issue is not regular doctor issues, but issues related to transphobia…

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