Men vs women. Not really, but we men are generally simply not informed of the importance of these things. Not being medical pros, I'm not sure where even the idea of advocating for ourselves would come from. First, we would have to know there was something that needed to be advocated for. Until just recently, most of us have never heard of PC until we start getting those PSA tests. And I find when I talk to men who have been treated for PC, they are still tremendously ignorant of what is going on with them and their bodies. How do we correct that?
But, discrimination can go both ways, I guess. I spent a lot of years specializing in doing anesthesia foe women's surgery, and especially doing the epidurals for childbirth. I bet I have done between 5000 and 10,000 epidurals, plus thousands of spinals and generals mostly for women's surgeries. (Hysterectomies, C-sections)
I also trained a lot of students, many of whom were female. So one day I am supervising a young lady anestheia(CRNA) student as she does the anesthesia for either a D+C, or a vaginal hysterectomy. I can't remember the case, only that it is one where the patients legs were up in stirrups, just as we were for our RPs. At this point the student said something more or less like "poor woman. It's just awful what women have to go through.". Which is true enough as far as it goes. Keep in mind this nurse being trained in anesthesia is both a nurse and now an anesthesia provider for ALL patients, male and female. So, I was with her in the sympathy department for what this patient was having to go through, but in a more generalized way, so I said "Yep, it is pretty horrible what people have to go through, male or female". So I was giving her a chance to have this empathy for all her patients.
But I was pretty surprised when she said, " well, I don't think men have to go through something like this, like women do all the time, something this traumatic like being put up in stirrups and having their genitals worked on.". So yes, this female healthcare provider was actually making the case that women had it worse in the medical world, and deserved more sympathy. So, I asked her "what about
when you are over at the main unit(there is no "men's" hospital, only the main unit for general stuff for both men and women, and separate women's unit for all things specifically female related. I think that is a common scenario around the country) , at the main unit helping a man have his testicles removed?", I figured even in her short career she must have been in on at least one of those cases, or something similar. Or when a man is up in the stirrups getting his prostate cut out, maybe later followed by a testicles removed, or getting his bladder worked on or just plain prostate surgery(TURP) or maybe a rectal surgery? All preceded by having some 19 year old female student nurse who maybe knows as she was his daughter's or granddaughter's classmate shaving him and putting a catheter in? Didn't she figure all of that was also pretty rough on the men, about
as rough as this vaginal hysterectomy was on a woman? My point was: life can be hell for any and all of us, regardless of our gender. To her credit she seemed to suddenly understand, and said she had never thought of it that way. However, it still always bothered me that an RN who was now in advanced training for anesthesia had not already thought of it that way. After all, she was taking care of males as well as females, and they could use her empathy just as much as the females could. I'm not certain they had been getting it though. If not, maybe they did after I pointed out a couple of things to her about
what all humans, including men, go through.
Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 5/25/2019 10:08:51 AM (GMT-6)