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Having a doctor of a different gender shouldn't be a concern.Granted I'll admit i prefer a female doctor checking my physical body parts espically if she is attractive
31 years ago, I was a pregnant 17 yr old kid who had left her parents house, had no health insurance & was getting prenatal care at the county clinic.
I could have been the "poster child" for a DHHS "Don't end up like this!" campaign.
I was laying flat on my back, feet in stirrups when in walks the doctor WITH 6 MALE MED STUDENTS & proceeds to flip on the overhead lamp & give a 10 minute dissertation, complete with full visuals, on the proper way to conduct a pelvic exam!
I guess I was just a piece of convenient meat to them, or at least that's how it felt. There was a poster on the ceiling (there is ALWAYS a poster on the ceiling...) of a kitten hanging off a branch or something & it said "Hang In There!"
I tried to keep from kicking them in the teeth by telling myself "Maybe this will seem funny to me in 20 years & I'll be able to look back at this & laugh?"
But, no; instead, the older I get the more angry it makes me when I remember it; which I don't all that much. It's not like it haunts me or anything.
That being said; theres not much that could happen in a doctors office that will top that for me now, male or female!
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Originally Posted by runswithscissors
Your trauma has taken over your accurate memory. It's ludicrous.
NOBODY in a million years is just laying there in stirrups waiting for a doctor in a closed room. LOL the receptionist said "OK get undressed and lay on table, put the stirrups up and get in them?"
They don't even PUT you into the stirrups until you're laying on the table and getting instructions of WHEN and how far down to lay.
And NO doctor just waltzes in a room and does that without speaking to you, for goodness sakes.
And no doctor just waltzed in a room and does a pelvic without even asking you how you are and if you have any concerns etc so THEY KNOW WHAT TO GIVE EXTRA ATTENTION TO.
And yes, in teaching hospitals, or maybe county clinics, that's where you might have students observing but I've NEVER EVER had someone NOT ASK me first. But ok, YMMV on that.
And I had my kid a couple years before you. And, BTW, pelvic exams were not routine in pregnancy back then. I know because my OB had a giant fight with my Company doctor refusing to do them.
Pretty bold to call someone's traumatic experience LUDICROUS. As if YOU can speak for what EVERY doctor's office in the country was doing 30 years ago.
How do you know that the nurse wasn't already prepping the room/instruments/patient just before the doctor came into the room? Depending on the doctor, sometimes they talk to you while you're still dressed, THEN come back in to do the actual exam. Do you really think the protocol is so regimented and that doctors have so little free will that there are not differences in routine? BTW, would it even matter if the OP hadn't been up in stirrups the moment they came in - so what if she was put up in them AFTER they came in - it all amounts to the same thing whether she misstated it here or simply mis-remembered the order it which it occurred 30 years ago.
And it may not have been a typical experience but 30 years ago women were not attended to as gently as now - I can see not specifically being asked about students observing or not. Maybe there was something special about the OPs case that merited special attention?
And just because YOU had some "battle" about pelvic exams doesn't mean much - the OP was 17 years old with an obvious first pregnancy, might that impact whether or not a pelvic was advised? How about the trimester she was in? What about if there were any complications that you weren't having? I guess if you were even a nurse with any medical knowledge you'd have mentioned your expertise in the area....right?
Such outrage that a woman could possibly have had a negative experience! I'm glad you were never mistreated but believe me, many people have had negative experiences in doctors' offices.
Actually, I had a pelvic exam at the county health clinic (needed medicaid and you had to have a doctor examine you before you could get medicaid but you had to have insurance before any doctor except the county clinic would see you for pregnancy) and the nurse had me get onto the table, put my feet into the stirrups and just lay there waiting until the doctor (female) came in and did a very painful pelvic exam, when I was 15 weeks pregnant. The doctor might have said one sentence to me, I can't remember. There were no questions about how I was or any concerns etc.
I had my baby at a teaching hospital and by the third day of trying to induce, they were bringing groups of students in to feel how high my cervix was and see if anyone was able to rupture the membranes to get labor started. I didn't put up with it for very long...if you're not dialated at all, it's a very uncomfortable thing to go through once, much less over and over. I ended up with a c-section and about 30 people were in the room...six doing the actual delivery, an anesthesiologist and six of his students around my head, a team waiting to take the baby to NICU, a bunch of nurses. The operating room was two stories high and there was a glassed-in observation room that had more people observing.
I've gotten less tolerant of things like that over the years. When I got an IUD, my GYN was being trained on how to use a different kind of applicator for it and she asked if I was okay with having the doctor who was training her in the room, and a couple of extra nurses. That was okay with me. She's done a bunch of biopsies on me and the IUD was a pretty similar procedure, and I trust her. Another time there was a brand new student doctor shadowing her and he was asking me what my visit was for, and he couldn't pronounce or spell "endometrial", and I had a feeling I might be the first person he was doing a pelvic exam on (or the first vag he ever saw), and I told my GYN I'd rather not have him there and she was fine with it.
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Originally Posted by Norstromos
Out of curiosity, do you view yourself as some kind of Princess? It's not as if everything deserves to go your way just because you are pregnant or a woman.
Actually, as the 26 year old male that you are, I'd like to see your reaction at being spread eagled on your stomach with your a-hole jacked wide open with half a dozen guys (or some women too, if that's your preference) with their hand up there wrist deep trying to rupture something. How "prince-like" would you be feeling at that moment? Guys deserve no "privilege" either but I suppose even you deserve a little decency - more than this woman got, anyway.
Out of curiosity, do you view yourself as some kind of Princess? It's not as if everything deserves to go your way just because you are pregnant or a woman.
What are you talking about?
Not wanting a bunch of people to try breaking my water by hand? That's like having someone put their entire hand all the way up inside you and then jab a finger into the center of the most sensitive spot. A lot of women will get crampy pain as soon as the cervix is touched...it's even worse when something is trying to go through the cervix. I was hooked up to lots of things...IV, catheter, fetal monitor, blood pressure cuff and trying hard to hold still, but the pain was enough that I kept scooting away and falling off the top of the bed and pulling out the IV by accident. Then they'd have me scoot back down onto the bed, hook up whatever came unhooked, and do it all over again. I've had broken bones that hurt less than that.
Or was it not wanting a million people in the operating room? Privacy concerns aside, the more people in the room, the more chance of some sort of infection. It also felt very vulnerable to have my arms tied down and not to be able to wear my glasses and to have that many people there. The whole time my daughter was in NICU and I was going to the hospital to be with her, various medical people would come up and ask how I was doing and how the baby was doing and say they'd been there for her birth, and I didn't recognize any of them. That's an uncomfortable feeling.
Back then, I didn't realize I had any say over what was acceptable to me in a medical setting. Now, if I'm uncomfortable with something, I will speak up, and if it can't be resolved, I will go home.
No it isn't. Female doctors don't belong on a pedestal, anymore than male doctors.
My first OBGYN visit, in my late teens, was to a female one. She was a total beyotch, she made the whole thing awful. Right off the bat, after I got into the exam room, she out of the blue accused me of being in there because I was pregnant and wanted her to tell my mother for me--I wasn't pregnant at all, I was a virgin, and I had no clue what she was yelling about.
Appalling woman, a nasty experience, and I never went to her again. Now quite happy with a male OBGYN with a decent bedside manner.
Male, female, gender makes no difference to whether the doctor has half a clue or not.
No it isn't. Female doctors don't belong on a pedestal, anymore than male doctors.
My first OBGYN visit, in my late teens, was to a female one. She was a total beyotch, she made the whole thing awful. Right off the bat, after I got into the exam room, she out of the blue accused me of being in there because I was pregnant and wanted her to tell my mother for me--I wasn't pregnant at all, I was a virgin, and I had no clue what she was yelling about.
Appalling woman, a nasty experience, and I never went to her again. Now quite happy with a male OBGYN with a decent bedside manner.
Male, female, gender makes no difference to whether the doctor has half a clue or not.
A male is a male, you can't take that away. If a straight male (the VAST majority of men) sees an attractive naked women, he will get excited by that. It is simply asking for trouble. I could show you hundreds of cases where male gynecologists were charged with crimes related to their job, the same can't be said for females. All the women I date, agree with me on this.
The reason why so many women are blind to this is because they (or their parents) grew up in a time when women couldn't be doctors for sexist reasons, so they tricked themselves into being okay with men doing it. For the majority of western history, women helped women with health issues and men helped men. It wasn't until a few hundred years ago that this changed. Now, the majority of people going into gynecology are women, about 85%. Woman gynecologist will become the norm and very few women will see male gynecologists in the future. There is already a huge generational divide regaurding women being okay with male obgyns. Younger women are far less likely to be comfortable with it.
A male is a male, you can't take that away. If a straight male (the VAST majority of men) sees an attractive naked women, he will get excited by that.
Warped.... OBGYNs see lots of women with medical conditions that aren't very attractive, including miscarriages, STDs, post-menopausal issues, etc. And besides, there's no guarantee about a female doctor's sexual orientation either, although I've never seen any studies on that particular issue... I gather that reality isn't what floats your particular boat, though.
Warped.... OBGYNs see lots of women with medical conditions that aren't very attractive, including miscarriages, STDs, post-menopausal issues, etc. And besides, there's no guarantee about a female doctor's sexual orientation either, although I've never seen any studies on that particular issue... I gather that reality isn't what floats your particular boat, though.
Feel free to ignore what I said and only respond to one sentence. Obgyns also see many women who don't have those conditions, who are healthy and attractive. Any lesbian can go in a womens locker room, or changing room anywhere to see naked women. They could also go into waxing or something that takes much less training and never be suspect like a man would be.
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