
This is the sort of weird sh*t that happens when we nurture people’s mental illnesses instead of treating them.
When the man arrived at the hospital with severe abdominal pains, a nurse didn’t consider it an emergency, noting that he was obese and had stopped taking blood pressure medicines. In reality, he was pregnant — a transgender man in labor that was about to end in a stillbirth.
…The 32-year-old patient told the nurse he was transgender when he arrived at the emergency room and his electronic medical record listed him as male. He hadn’t had a period in several years and had been taking testosterone, a hormone that has masculinizing effects and can decrease ovulation and menstruation. But he quit taking the hormone and blood pressure medication after he lost insurance.
A home pregnancy test was positive and he said he had “peed himself” — a possible sign of ruptured membranes and labor. A nurse ordered a pregnancy test but considered him stable and his problems non-urgent.
Trending: He Watched 9 Guys Run a Train On Her & Then Later Married Her
Several hours later, a doctor evaluated him and the hospital test confirmed pregnancy. An ultrasound showed unclear signs of fetal heart activity, and an exam revealed that part of the umbilical cord had slipped into the birth canal. Doctors prepared to do an emergency cesarean delivery, but in the operating room no fetal heartbeat was heard. Moments later, the man delivered a stillborn baby.
…“It’s a very upsetting incident, it’s a tragic outcome,” said Dr. Tamara Wexler, a hormone specialist at NYU Langone Medical Center.
“Medical training should include exposure to transgender patients” so health workers are better able to meet their needs, Wexler said. “A lot of doctors who are practicing didn’t have that in their training” but can still learn from such patients now.
Nic Rider, a transgender health specialist and psychologist at the University of Minnesota, said training isn’t enough.
“There are implicit biases that need to be addressed,” Rider said.
Oh, yes, the real problem is the hospital and “implicit biases,” not some woman who turned her body into a science experiment because of her mental illness and then was so out of it that she didn’t even realize she could be pregnant.
Here’s an alternative idea: Maybe we should stop encouraging people with a mental illness to mutilate themselves in the false hope that they can change sexes. Once we do that and quite properly start treating people’s mental illnesses as a problem THEY HAVE TO DEAL WITH, not a problem everyone else has to work around, all these self-created issues surrounding transsexuals, sports, bathrooms, pregnancy, deadnaming, etc., will all just disappear and we’ll be back to the place we never should have left as a society.
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please hover over that comment, click the ∨ icon, and mark it as spam. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.