Receiving medical care while nonbinary: a curious adventure.

[firecat]

As my readers might know, I'm nonbinary transmasc, around two years on T. My body shape usually gets me clocked as female, and I'm growing a beard but it's still pretty sparse.

I recently had to have a routine colonoscopy done in the hospital because I have sleep apnea. My medical forms included an option for specifying my gender identity and pronouns. I put nonbinary and "they/he."

So I'm in the prep ward, wearing a KN95 mask, and several nurses are doing things like putting in an IV and asking me questions about my meds and medical history. They are all using "she" to refer to me. I don't correct them because I just want the procedure over with.

Then another nurse comes in, I think the one who is going to be assisting during the procedure. She calls me Mr [Lastname]. Then she notices the other nurses using "she," so she also starts using "she".

After the procedure I'm being taken care of by a different set of nurses. My mask is gone. They are all using "he" to refer to me. I don't know if this is because they read my chart more carefully or if my scraggly facial hair tips me over to the other side of the binary appearance-wise.

Anyway, I found it amusing and interesting.

Comments

[firecat]

Yes! It takes time that asking the same questions six times doesn’t take!

I always find it amusing in a grim way when procedures are unnecessarily repeated like that or contracts get longer and longer, and I know that each redundant bit is the result of a lawsuit. E.g., real estate contracts doubled or tripled in length between the time I bought my first house in 1998 and the house I bought in 2017. It’s like reading a history book.

[silveradept]

Well, it would certainly help all of us if those contract parts weren't there, but to get rid of them, we'd have to get rid of the jobs whose purpose is to screw everyone over for maximum profit.