I’m currently a medical student and a licensed EMT with a chunk of professional experience in medicine as well as having multiple chronic illnesses, a couple of which are very stigmatized. I’ve kind of settled into conducting my appointments like I’m presenting a patient to an attending physician. I still use I/me/my/mine and describe things from my perspective, but it’s still a rather…professional(?) discussion. I feel like it helps me approach the conversation in a productive way, and my physicians seem pretty receptive to my suggestions for treatment and testing…but it also feels like I’m dehumanizing myself a bit.

The biggest issue I’ve had tends to be with nurses/NPs/admin/etc when I call and say “hey, I’m having these weird symptoms and I think this is the diagnosis, can you get me in to see the physician?” and they sort of short-circuit almost because they seem to be in the habit of exerting their own judgement about a situation.

I recently had a nurse try to punt me back to my primary care physician because the specialist was out of the office and she wouldn’t escalate to the physician on-call because she didn’t understand that I had already talked to my primary care physician and she said she wasn’t equipped to deal with it. (This was an issue that has the potential to be life-threatening in a matter of days that, fortunately, I knew how to kinda sorta manage on my own for a little bit.)