Death by provincialism

I went to Grand Rounds today* at our nearby non-major-world-religion-affiliated hospital, where the speaker gave a talk on transgender medicine. Interesting stuff, especially the historical bits in the beginning.

It was a mixed crowd. At least one residency program rotates their docs-in-training through this hospital, so there were lots and lots of young faces. Neat! Have I mentioned how much I miss teaching and just being around residents? I do. Anyway, I spotted a few of the local docs, some young, some old. Some very old. Some docs when they retire, they hang up the stethoscope for good; some docs keep coming back to grand rounds because, well, I guess they love medicine and they like to keep up with new things. I can appreciate that.

One old guy must have been pushing ninety — tiny, hunched over, but with a briskness to his step. After the talk, he left the conference room with some of the other retirees, and said to one, “They never taught us about THAT in medical school.”

I felt like telling him, “I graduated in ’90, and they never told US about that, either!”

Add transgender to the list of Things Not Even Deserving One Hour of Lecture Time, along with nutrition and . . . well, sex. Did we get any talks at all on sex? I remember one of my female friends asking a lecturer about dyspareunia, eliciting titters from some of the students and sidelong glances at her blushing boyfriend. But that wasn’t even a lecture on sex; I think it was a lecture on genital anatomy. And NO, that does NOT count as a lecture on sex.

Sometimes I think we’re still a very provincial, puritanical nation, even in our institutions.

One lecturer even saw fit to warn us of the dangers of provincialism. Here’s the story he told the class:

This was some years ago, when most gay men outside of San Francisco remained closeted. A fellow from one of the suburbs an hour away used to come into town on the weekends, do his thing, then on Sunday evening return home, where he worked the usual Monday-through-Friday nine-to-five job. One Monday evening he developed severe abdominal pain and drove himself down to the local hospital’s ER.

The man’s abdomen was tender but not yet rigid. Who knows what the ER doc was contemplating — perhaps a general surgery consultation to evaluate the patient for appendicitis. That, at least, would have made some sense. But the patient made the mistake of telling the doctor the truth. “We were fisting,” he said.

After explaining to the doctor what this meant, the doctor decided his patient was delusional and gave him a fat shot of thorazine, which knocked the patient out. They kept him on thorazine for the next day or two . . . however long it took for the supervising physician to note that his patient had gone into septic shock. By the time anyone realized what had happened to the man, it was too late.

I took this story to heart as a cautionary tale. A doctor’s ignorance could be deadly to his patients.

Which is why, of course, I try to keep informed on all of the newest paraphilias 🙂

D.
*The idea being to shmooze the local docs . . . but they were all far more interested in the speaker than in me, a new face in the room. Oh, well. I’ll try again in a couple of weeks.

Walnut, September 17, 2008. Category: Sex, The Barbarous Craft.

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