While there is definitely an issue of women receiving worse treatment, the providers have good reasons to ask; namely there are a lot of tests where they have to know if you could be pregnant before they can run them, even an X-ray. If you just tell them you’re pregnant up front, then they can save you a blood draw for an HCG test. Otherwise, they probably will, to make sure.
Edit: This blew up, so I wanted to clarify something. This is clearly a very common and frustrating experience for many women who may feel bullied into giving up private information. I don’t want anyone to think that they must answer all the doctor’s questions. You have a right to refuse to answer questions and to refuse care. Read the rest of the thread and stay informed of your rights.
“No, I am not menstruating.” “No, I have never been pregnant.” I tell them I’m a trans woman. “No, they did not implant a uterus in me.” “Yes, I’m sure. 😅”
I’ve also made a mental note to not pee before doctor’s visits, in case they want me to pee for them.
I routinely decline urine and blood tests because I got my tubes tied in my 20s and have been on merana for years, both clearly documented in my files. My doctors still somehow magically find a way to treat me without it.
Just food for thought :) I’m sure not every doctor is willing to respect your privacy, but some are :)
That sounds exhausting. I’m sorry that you’re met with so much ignorance and disrespect. I would probably complain to the patient ombudsman if this is a recurring issue.
I think there’s been some spotlight on the sad state of women’s healthcare in the news, but I’ve not seen much about trans care. I hope that improves, but I’m not optimistic under the current administration.
Yes, they can’t take your word for it. I was just implying that if you already told them you are pregnant then they can save a step since the safe choice is to not do the test.
Oh yeah, and I definitively think the doctor in the comic is being rude and dismissive. I could see the question being used as a proxy for “are you possibly pregnant”, though.
Also, almost all the intake questionnaires you get at the doctor’s office are templates that they have to complete per policy. I just treat them like when they ask me if I have a loyalty card at the store.
almost all the intake questionnaires you get at the doctor’s office are templates that they have to complete per policy.
Are you aware that “policy data collection” has no bearing on what information you actually need to disclose in order to get care? And that it’s prohibitively invasive in a way that it doesn’t need to be for no reason other than to collect incredibly intimate data? (Lots of women aren’t gunna answer your invasive questions, fuck off!) And that that data never ever is meant to help you, the person who is seeking care, but will help the state or maaaaaybe your possibly progeny, who might not ever exist?
Cuz like. You could show up with no ID and lie your butthole out about your life situation, and your care would be functionally identical (insurance notwithstanding), because they need to due dilligence it either way.
So the data collection about female fertility isn’t required, its just another way to keep women down when abortion legality is questionable or overturned.
I understand there are SOME reasons to ask that info, like abdominal or back pain, but thats not the usual complaint that gets the question.
Yes, but there are other physiological reasons why it may be pertinent. For instance, the clotting factors in your blood may behave somewhat differently depending on which phase of the menstrual cycle you are in, or in relation to several ovarian or hormonal conditions that would affect menstruation and present with changes to the menstrual cycle. That could ultimately be relevant to the treatment for a traumatic injury. But you wouldn’t know that, because you are not a physician
I get what this comic is pointing out, and I understand that many women receive subpar care, but your doctor asking you about your menstrual cycle should NOT be a sticking point for you as a patient. It is frequently relevant, and most doctors are not just asking questions for the fun of it. Overall, medicine is continually advancing, and we are seeing much more research done on female bodies. The majority of graduating physicians are now female, and that scale continues to tip farther and farther each year.
If you find yourself getting annoyed at the questions the doctor is asking you, take a deep breath and try to answer them honestly while continuing to advocate for your needs. Refusing to answer your doctor’s questions rarely does you or your doctor any good
If you find yourself getting annoyed at the questions the doctor is asking you, take a deep breath and try to answer them honestly while continuing to advocate for your needs. Refusing to answer your doctor’s questions rarely does you or your doctor any good
I routinely have to educate my doctors on my various health issues, I will maintain my level of skepticism when it comes to these things after years of medical abuse before I finally received a diagnosis.
Doctors aren’t gods. They are fallible. It is a relationship between patient and doctor and they should respect that over checking a box on a form for federal funding.
All of those things might be relevant if they actually bothered to study how those things happen and change throughout the cycle.
They do not. Laughably do not. I encourage you to verify for yourself that women’s issues are not even studied. Only wothin the last year we got a crash test dummy built to be female from the ground up, rather than a re-scaled male dummy.
None of those things are considerations. None of the realities for women are considered. Mostly because none of those things are remotely known because nobody studies women.
It’s true that a lot of research in the US until the last few decades focused on men. However, any research on the general population has been required to include women since around the 1990s if funded by the government.
There’s been a massive push to catch up on research topics related to women since then. Policies, regulations, and applications follow slowly after research but looking at sex differences is pretty much standard in human research now. Still a whole lot of catching up to do of course.
I work on NIH’s women’s research initiatives so I know a bit about this but it’s easy enough to confirm for yourself. Search PubMed for systematic reviews or meta-analyses from the last 15 or so years on basically any human or public health related topic and you’ll very likely see references to women or sex differences.
Furthermore, you know what kind of data helps progress medical research? Patient data. For instance, knowing where in the menstrual cycle a woman is when she experiences a traumatic injury might later help inform larger demographic studies regarding healing outcomes and hormonal health. Often patients do not see or understand the larger picture, and the things that don’t make sense to them do in fact have a rationale
Verify for myself? I am a woman. I also work in healthcare. I know how frustrating it can be. However, the vast majority of doctors who I know (which I’d imagine is probably a few hundred more than the average person) do actually care about women’s health. There is absolutely a great deal more research that is needed and more work to do to reduce health disparities, but many physicians today are actively engaged in that work. The research is happening. It is slow and it will take a long time, but it is happening.
I’m offended they don’t do a sperm count and motility check before my routine medical appointments. X-rays can damage them, and there seems to be no priority to safeguard my ability to procreate before my necessary and unreleated medical treatment is initiated.
Sure, if you’re a trans man, perhaps in the middle of your transitioning where maybe there is a chance you could still get pregnant. Not sure if that’s possible. I’m a developer not a doctor. I don’t see why that would be any different, though. I don’t make the rules, either.
Funny you should mention it because I’ve said the same thing during the design of an app we were building where they needed exactly this information. Since they only had one field for “sex” and it was male/female only, I argued maybe they should leave the pregnancy question enabled if they picked male.
Again. But you can’t just look at someone and know they’re not a pregnant trans man. So better force everyone to take a pregnancy test, including cis men, just in case.
These days in certain US states a court could use this date as a starting point to say the abortion pills you used a few months later were for a pregnancy that must have been over six weeks. Or the same doctor could deny you the pills. Even though you might just have very long or very short cycles.
The report indicates there are far more cases of miscarriage criminalization than have made national headlines. In one widely covered case in late 2023, police charged an Ohio woman with felony abuse of a corpse after she miscarried into a toilet. In another, earlier this year, a Georgia woman who had been found bleeding and unconscious after a miscarriage faced one count of concealing the death of another person, and one count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body. The charges against both women were ultimately dropped.
Nine cases discovered by Pregnancy Justice involved allegations that women had considered abortions, such as ordering abortion pills or looking for information about abortion online. Only one woman in those cases was charged with violating a criminal abortion ban, likely because it is legal in most states to “self-manage” one’s own abortion. US abortion bans tend to penalize providers and people who help abortion patients, not the patients themselves.
In 2025, lawmakers in at least 12 states – including Alabama and Oklahoma – introduced legislation that would treat fetuses as people, which would leave women who have abortions vulnerable to being charged with homicide. In several of those states, that charge would carry the death penalty.
“What our work has proven is that, unfortunately, anything is possible when it comes to policing pregnancy,” Sussman said.
If that were the case, they would accept “my tubes are tied and I’ve additionally been on long term birth control since I was a teen and thus haven’t had periods or pregnancy risk in decades” or “I have not been sexually active in several years”
But they don’t, they say “just give us an estimate on when the last one was”
Tubal ligation and birth control, while wildly effective, aren’t 100%. Plus, there are probably other reasons they want to know about menstruation other than pregnancy. They’re just checking a box, let 'em get on with it.
No, but they are strong signs that the person is unconcerned with the hypothetical existence of a fetus so early in its term that they have not noticed it yet.
Do you have to regularily answer when your last bowel movement was because it could be related?
No, of course not, not unless it seems -actually- related.
Thats not what women deal with. We are asked even when it is so wildly unlikely to be related (as comic above) as to be functionally impossible as a cause.
Because there’s a chance.
But no, sometimes there isn’t, and I will abort if I just happen to be wrong (something I tell my docs who are concerned I might be pregnant, because I have ZERO desire to have kids), give me my fucking healthcare.
Yeah this is what I mean. We don’t have to answer this question just because it’s a checkbox on a form at the doctor’s office. Sorry it took so long for them to accept what you were saying.
I’ve been here for a long time fighting against the absolute dick-wavey crap this platform is. Idk if you have with other accounts, but if not:
first wave - lots of women came with during the api nonsense.
6mths later, most women driven off by a preponderance of bad behavior. Because the vast majority of commenting lemmy are shit men with shit opinions (don’t tell me I’m wrong, idgaf what you say, prove me wrong.)
Every other wave has been a repeat but with fewer women showing up each time. Because every man on this platform seems to think he has authority to speak about women’s issues, and women rightly nope the fuck out.
I genuinely wish I had some other platform to go to, I haven’t liked being here for a long time… but at least it riles me up enough for my feminist flag to fly on fire. Maybe that helps someone.
We’re in the same boat then (or just about anyway). I came here about 6 months ago and have made it a point to post more geared towards women and minorities to help bring a balance to this place.
but at least it riles me up enough for my feminist flag to fly on fire. Maybe that helps someone.
It really helps! I know I feel better when I see others chiming in and pushing back against the blatant sexism. And I’ve had people reach out to me directly to thank me for being a loud feminist here.
I remember back to the early days of Reddit and how misogynistic it was then as well. It’s still there, but there’s so many women-centered communities that are lovely now! I’m stubborn enough to sit my ass on Lemmy and make change the same way. I’ll keep an eye out for your username now :)
This place isn’t that large, I recognize usernames. There’s also certain topics that will bring out the misogyny from some of the more prolific Lemmy users.
At this point, im not at all convinced its actual leftism anymore. Its sounding more and more like Green MAGA everywhere I go.
On topic, I am still utterly appalled at how many stories I see about women’s cancer being misdiagnosed by lazy/shithead physicians. I dont know what to do about it though, and frankly its depressing to see community after community willfully ignore the problem.
To counter with another anecdote, my 55-yo wife never gets asked. When I showed her the comic she didn’t understand it. Being Asian, she has no white hair, wrinkles and hasn’t had a hysterectomy.
See my other comment about my oh-so-rare doc actually remembering who I am as a patient, even after not seeing me for a year.
Huh! So all that stuff about “it’s vitally important information for the doctors to know before any treatment” either doesn’t apply to her, or her doctors aren’t competent, or it’s just as bullshit as we always knew. Best of health to her. To you both.
They’re just checking a box, let 'em get on with it.
I don’t answer that question unless it’s pertinent to why I’m seeing a doctor in the first place. We don’t have to give them this information every time.
It’s actually fairly relevant to your overall physiological functioning, hence why they want to know. Not sure why it’s such a sticking point for your doctor to ask a question about your physiological functioning, regardless of whether or not you think it’s relevant. Being a woman myself and a nurse, I understand that medical care is often lacking for women, but doctors assessing where you are in your menstrual cycle is not the reason why. In fact, I would be way more wary of a physician who doesn’t ask
The US is also in the middle of rolling back women’s rights to bodily autonomy and tracking women having miscarriages in order to imprison them.
I don’t give a fuck about giving my last period date if I’m seeing the doctor for a gunshot wound. My doctors don’t push for a period date if I don’t want to give one either.
Edit: not really, even justifiably annoying a person whose attention to your situation could save your life is a bad idea, but that’s what I always want to tell them
I kinda do that, if they really push against my “are you serious? Genuinely serious?” I give them a date when I was 16, which was like 25 years ago, because its the last time I can reliably say I had one that wasn’t just hormone withdrawal (which is the actual reason the pill gives “periods” in the week of placebo pills, it’s not a real period)
My docs and nurses would genuinely find that funny af tho (their patents are mostly old men, and they find my levity quite disarming and enjoyable because they see me frequently enough for my kind of humor to be a hit) so I am gunna do that the next time they insist.
Honestly the technicians are probably required to fill out the date section of the form in order to proceed to the next tab. Doctors don’t torture people for fun.
As someone who builds said forms: that is why we put “patient declined to answer” as an option along with “not applicable”, “unknown” and other ways to get past the questions without having to put in a fake answer. “The computer won’t let me keep going without you answering the question” is a weak-ass excuse.
Doesn’t mean I won’t fight it, because they don’t actually need to know for most reasons. When they actually need to know, they have ways of asking that eliminate doubt, like “hey you are trying to get a uterine ablation, which causes scar tissue in your uterus that prevents proper implantation of fertile eggs. We need to be entirely sure you are sterile before you get this proceedure done, and that you recognize the implications”. (A proceedure I have tried to have done but it failed because my cervix is amazing!!! Powerful warrior cervix wouldn’t let boiling liquid or energetic mesh in!)
I fight against their data collection bullshit for fun and for others, because there’s no chance whatever that I’m pregnant and I know that. (tubal aside, I haven’t had sex in years and prefer my life that way. My tubal, at this point, is mostly BC in case of rape, I’m otherwise just not generally sexually active). I don’t need some asshole doctor accusing me of getting an abortion because my periods are basically never to begin with.
While there is definitely an issue of women receiving worse treatment, the providers have good reasons to ask; namely there are a lot of tests where they have to know if you could be pregnant before they can run them, even an X-ray. If you just tell them you’re pregnant up front, then they can save you a blood draw for an HCG test. Otherwise, they probably will, to make sure.
Edit: This blew up, so I wanted to clarify something. This is clearly a very common and frustrating experience for many women who may feel bullied into giving up private information. I don’t want anyone to think that they must answer all the doctor’s questions. You have a right to refuse to answer questions and to refuse care. Read the rest of the thread and stay informed of your rights.
“No, I am not menstruating.” “No, I have never been pregnant.” I tell them I’m a trans woman. “No, they did not implant a uterus in me.” “Yes, I’m sure. 😅”
I’ve also made a mental note to not pee before doctor’s visits, in case they want me to pee for them.
Going to the doctor hits different now.
I routinely decline urine and blood tests because I got my tubes tied in my 20s and have been on merana for years, both clearly documented in my files. My doctors still somehow magically find a way to treat me without it.
Just food for thought :) I’m sure not every doctor is willing to respect your privacy, but some are :)
That sounds exhausting. I’m sorry that you’re met with so much ignorance and disrespect. I would probably complain to the patient ombudsman if this is a recurring issue.
I think there’s been some spotlight on the sad state of women’s healthcare in the news, but I’ve not seen much about trans care. I hope that improves, but I’m not optimistic under the current administration.
That is what I like to call “a gross understatement”.
They have you do a pregnancy test in those cases regardless.
Yes, they can’t take your word for it. I was just implying that if you already told them you are pregnant then they can save a step since the safe choice is to not do the test.
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor
Right, but asking about a person’s menstrual cycle is different than asking if they’re pregnant. Just throwing that out there.
Oh yeah, and I definitively think the doctor in the comic is being rude and dismissive. I could see the question being used as a proxy for “are you possibly pregnant”, though.
Also, almost all the intake questionnaires you get at the doctor’s office are templates that they have to complete per policy. I just treat them like when they ask me if I have a loyalty card at the store.
Are you aware that “policy data collection” has no bearing on what information you actually need to disclose in order to get care? And that it’s prohibitively invasive in a way that it doesn’t need to be for no reason other than to collect incredibly intimate data? (Lots of women aren’t gunna answer your invasive questions, fuck off!) And that that data never ever is meant to help you, the person who is seeking care, but will help the state or maaaaaybe your possibly progeny, who might not ever exist?
Cuz like. You could show up with no ID and lie your butthole out about your life situation, and your care would be functionally identical (insurance notwithstanding), because they need to due dilligence it either way.
So the data collection about female fertility isn’t required, its just another way to keep women down when abortion legality is questionable or overturned.
I understand there are SOME reasons to ask that info, like abdominal or back pain, but thats not the usual complaint that gets the question.
Yes, but there are other physiological reasons why it may be pertinent. For instance, the clotting factors in your blood may behave somewhat differently depending on which phase of the menstrual cycle you are in, or in relation to several ovarian or hormonal conditions that would affect menstruation and present with changes to the menstrual cycle. That could ultimately be relevant to the treatment for a traumatic injury. But you wouldn’t know that, because you are not a physician
I get what this comic is pointing out, and I understand that many women receive subpar care, but your doctor asking you about your menstrual cycle should NOT be a sticking point for you as a patient. It is frequently relevant, and most doctors are not just asking questions for the fun of it. Overall, medicine is continually advancing, and we are seeing much more research done on female bodies. The majority of graduating physicians are now female, and that scale continues to tip farther and farther each year.
If you find yourself getting annoyed at the questions the doctor is asking you, take a deep breath and try to answer them honestly while continuing to advocate for your needs. Refusing to answer your doctor’s questions rarely does you or your doctor any good
I routinely have to educate my doctors on my various health issues, I will maintain my level of skepticism when it comes to these things after years of medical abuse before I finally received a diagnosis.
Doctors aren’t gods. They are fallible. It is a relationship between patient and doctor and they should respect that over checking a box on a form for federal funding.
All of those things might be relevant if they actually bothered to study how those things happen and change throughout the cycle.
They do not. Laughably do not. I encourage you to verify for yourself that women’s issues are not even studied. Only wothin the last year we got a crash test dummy built to be female from the ground up, rather than a re-scaled male dummy.
None of those things are considerations. None of the realities for women are considered. Mostly because none of those things are remotely known because nobody studies women.
Super fun cycle!
It’s true that a lot of research in the US until the last few decades focused on men. However, any research on the general population has been required to include women since around the 1990s if funded by the government.
There’s been a massive push to catch up on research topics related to women since then. Policies, regulations, and applications follow slowly after research but looking at sex differences is pretty much standard in human research now. Still a whole lot of catching up to do of course.
I work on NIH’s women’s research initiatives so I know a bit about this but it’s easy enough to confirm for yourself. Search PubMed for systematic reviews or meta-analyses from the last 15 or so years on basically any human or public health related topic and you’ll very likely see references to women or sex differences.
Furthermore, you know what kind of data helps progress medical research? Patient data. For instance, knowing where in the menstrual cycle a woman is when she experiences a traumatic injury might later help inform larger demographic studies regarding healing outcomes and hormonal health. Often patients do not see or understand the larger picture, and the things that don’t make sense to them do in fact have a rationale
Verify for myself? I am a woman. I also work in healthcare. I know how frustrating it can be. However, the vast majority of doctors who I know (which I’d imagine is probably a few hundred more than the average person) do actually care about women’s health. There is absolutely a great deal more research that is needed and more work to do to reduce health disparities, but many physicians today are actively engaged in that work. The research is happening. It is slow and it will take a long time, but it is happening.
Ok, do they study those things and apply those findings to actual healthcare?
No? They still barely pay lip service to half the population?
Cool. Handy.
Many of them do, yes, but it sounds like nothing anyone says will change your mind.
Yeah, you’re less likely to get a false negative.
If it’s that important, they’ll do a blood draw pregnancy test.
Would you rather be asked a slightly rude question by a doctor or have a blood draw?
I mean, they may do the blood draw anyway, but asking the question saves time and money up front.
I’m mostly here to combat the misinformation from people who have never been pregnant before spouting off “facts” like they’re right.
Then they should force men to take pregnancy tests as well. They can’t just take your word for it that you’re not a pregnant transgender man.
I’m offended they don’t do a sperm count and motility check before my routine medical appointments. X-rays can damage them, and there seems to be no priority to safeguard my ability to procreate before my necessary and unreleated medical treatment is initiated.
Sure, if you’re a trans man, perhaps in the middle of your transitioning where maybe there is a chance you could still get pregnant. Not sure if that’s possible. I’m a developer not a doctor. I don’t see why that would be any different, though. I don’t make the rules, either.
Funny you should mention it because I’ve said the same thing during the design of an app we were building where they needed exactly this information. Since they only had one field for “sex” and it was male/female only, I argued maybe they should leave the pregnancy question enabled if they picked male.
Again. But you can’t just look at someone and know they’re not a pregnant trans man. So better force everyone to take a pregnancy test, including cis men, just in case.
These days in certain US states a court could use this date as a starting point to say the abortion pills you used a few months later were for a pregnancy that must have been over six weeks. Or the same doctor could deny you the pills. Even though you might just have very long or very short cycles.
Does HIPPAA block this info without court action? Can an investigator just ask and be told?
It varies by state and then it varies by case. In some of these cases, it was the nurses that reported these women to the police.
Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe
What guarantee do you have that those rules won’t be revised? Or that someone won’t hack & leak it?
remember it’s Hippa the HIPAA Hippo
It’s HIPAA, not HIPPA and if she or the doctor are being charged with a crime, court is presumably involved.
Yes this type of information is covered by HIPAA and should never be disclosed without a warrant.
Just because it shouldn’t be disclosed doesn’t mean it’s never disclosed.
If that were the case, they would accept “my tubes are tied and I’ve additionally been on long term birth control since I was a teen and thus haven’t had periods or pregnancy risk in decades” or “I have not been sexually active in several years”
But they don’t, they say “just give us an estimate on when the last one was”
Tubal ligation and birth control, while wildly effective, aren’t 100%. Plus, there are probably other reasons they want to know about menstruation other than pregnancy. They’re just checking a box, let 'em get on with it.
No, but they are strong signs that the person is unconcerned with the hypothetical existence of a fetus so early in its term that they have not noticed it yet.
Do you have to regularily answer when your last bowel movement was because it could be related?
No, of course not, not unless it seems -actually- related.
Thats not what women deal with. We are asked even when it is so wildly unlikely to be related (as comic above) as to be functionally impossible as a cause.
Because there’s a chance.
But no, sometimes there isn’t, and I will abort if I just happen to be wrong (something I tell my docs who are concerned I might be pregnant, because I have ZERO desire to have kids), give me my fucking healthcare.
I had my uterus yeeted in 2015 and I kept getting asked until my hair was so white they were willing to accept that I couldn’t remember.
Yeah this is what I mean. We don’t have to answer this question just because it’s a checkbox on a form at the doctor’s office. Sorry it took so long for them to accept what you were saying.
While the comment immediately below this is basically “rofl thats not a problem!”
Lemmy is a trip… supposedly heavily leftist, which strongly implies feminist, but actually anything but…
It gets my goat how leftist and progressive everyone pretends to be here only to see the most sexist shit get typed out into comments. It’s maddening.
I’ve appreciated your comments in this thread a lot <3
I’ve been here for a long time fighting against the absolute dick-wavey crap this platform is. Idk if you have with other accounts, but if not:
first wave - lots of women came with during the api nonsense.
6mths later, most women driven off by a preponderance of bad behavior. Because the vast majority of commenting lemmy are shit men with shit opinions (don’t tell me I’m wrong, idgaf what you say, prove me wrong.)
Every other wave has been a repeat but with fewer women showing up each time. Because every man on this platform seems to think he has authority to speak about women’s issues, and women rightly nope the fuck out.
I genuinely wish I had some other platform to go to, I haven’t liked being here for a long time… but at least it riles me up enough for my feminist flag to fly on fire. Maybe that helps someone.
We’re in the same boat then (or just about anyway). I came here about 6 months ago and have made it a point to post more geared towards women and minorities to help bring a balance to this place.
It really helps! I know I feel better when I see others chiming in and pushing back against the blatant sexism. And I’ve had people reach out to me directly to thank me for being a loud feminist here.
I remember back to the early days of Reddit and how misogynistic it was then as well. It’s still there, but there’s so many women-centered communities that are lovely now! I’m stubborn enough to sit my ass on Lemmy and make change the same way. I’ll keep an eye out for your username now :)
It may as well be different people, no need to get that mad about people pretending
This place isn’t that large, I recognize usernames. There’s also certain topics that will bring out the misogyny from some of the more prolific Lemmy users.
At this point, im not at all convinced its actual leftism anymore. Its sounding more and more like Green MAGA everywhere I go.
On topic, I am still utterly appalled at how many stories I see about women’s cancer being misdiagnosed by lazy/shithead physicians. I dont know what to do about it though, and frankly its depressing to see community after community willfully ignore the problem.
To counter with another anecdote, my 55-yo wife never gets asked. When I showed her the comic she didn’t understand it. Being Asian, she has no white hair, wrinkles and hasn’t had a hysterectomy.
See my other comment about my oh-so-rare doc actually remembering who I am as a patient, even after not seeing me for a year.
Huh! So all that stuff about “it’s vitally important information for the doctors to know before any treatment” either doesn’t apply to her, or her doctors aren’t competent, or it’s just as bullshit as we always knew. Best of health to her. To you both.
I don’t answer that question unless it’s pertinent to why I’m seeing a doctor in the first place. We don’t have to give them this information every time.
It’s actually fairly relevant to your overall physiological functioning, hence why they want to know. Not sure why it’s such a sticking point for your doctor to ask a question about your physiological functioning, regardless of whether or not you think it’s relevant. Being a woman myself and a nurse, I understand that medical care is often lacking for women, but doctors assessing where you are in your menstrual cycle is not the reason why. In fact, I would be way more wary of a physician who doesn’t ask
The US is also in the middle of rolling back women’s rights to bodily autonomy and tracking women having miscarriages in order to imprison them.
I don’t give a fuck about giving my last period date if I’m seeing the doctor for a gunshot wound. My doctors don’t push for a period date if I don’t want to give one either.
Tell them it was in march of 1623
Edit: not really, even justifiably annoying a person whose attention to your situation could save your life is a bad idea, but that’s what I always want to tell them
I kinda do that, if they really push against my “are you serious? Genuinely serious?” I give them a date when I was 16, which was like 25 years ago, because its the last time I can reliably say I had one that wasn’t just hormone withdrawal (which is the actual reason the pill gives “periods” in the week of placebo pills, it’s not a real period)
My docs and nurses would genuinely find that funny af tho (their patents are mostly old men, and they find my levity quite disarming and enjoyable because they see me frequently enough for my kind of humor to be a hit) so I am gunna do that the next time they insist.
Honestly the technicians are probably required to fill out the date section of the form in order to proceed to the next tab. Doctors don’t torture people for fun.
As someone who builds said forms: that is why we put “patient declined to answer” as an option along with “not applicable”, “unknown” and other ways to get past the questions without having to put in a fake answer. “The computer won’t let me keep going without you answering the question” is a weak-ass excuse.
Doesn’t mean I won’t fight it, because they don’t actually need to know for most reasons. When they actually need to know, they have ways of asking that eliminate doubt, like “hey you are trying to get a uterine ablation, which causes scar tissue in your uterus that prevents proper implantation of fertile eggs. We need to be entirely sure you are sterile before you get this proceedure done, and that you recognize the implications”. (A proceedure I have tried to have done but it failed because my cervix is amazing!!! Powerful warrior cervix wouldn’t let boiling liquid or energetic mesh in!)
I fight against their data collection bullshit for fun and for others, because there’s no chance whatever that I’m pregnant and I know that. (tubal aside, I haven’t had sex in years and prefer my life that way. My tubal, at this point, is mostly BC in case of rape, I’m otherwise just not generally sexually active). I don’t need some asshole doctor accusing me of getting an abortion because my periods are basically never to begin with.
It’s not a requirement to move onto the next form.