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Originally Posted by ThisWayOut
I have a similar fear. It can be really unsettling going to the er and finding out there's littlelittle choice... I've found some hospitals to be really receptive (or at least pretend to be) to finding a female physician. At one point, when I was struggling a lot with ptsd from abuse, and also self harming, I wound up in the hospital several times. I expressed my fear as best I could, and explained that an exam by a male doctor would be incredibly triggering. Most of the time, they did their best to find a female Dr. The times they could not, there was always a female nurse present... without fail, the exams by the male doctors were extremely triggering, but they managed to give me something afterwards to help calm down.
If you can find a way to express your fear to them, even if you just tell them you have a history of abuse and ask for a female doctor, they should be somewhat responsive. Maybe write a short note if you can't say it? .. I'm sorry to hear they are generally rude. It can suck when the people we seek help from make us feel un-cared-for (I've had my fair share of that too).
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Maybe the reason is because I live in such a large city and they deal with so much but any time you go to the ER basically treated like a criminal here. Come in with severe pain and it's automatically suspected that you're looking for drugs. Challenge anything they say and they send security in because they think they're about to be attacked. Or, in the case I mentioned above, they wouldn't try to have a conversation with me they would just repeat the same thing over and over, "That's not possible" after everything I said and then act annoyed with me. Which is also a trigger when people just don't care.
No one ever told me I was allowed to just get up and walk out for non-psychiatric issues. Until I was 20 for some reason I didn't know. Now once when I was in the ER for psychiatric issues, all I was doing was crying and they gave me a shot that put me to sleep because for some reason they took my crying as a threat to them.
Note to anyone who reads this: Do not move to Middle Tennessee!