The problem is that I'm having great difficulty finding a gay doctor as they don't really "advertise" the fact that they are gay especially if they work in the suburbs in nice
family communities such as mine. I do know gay specialists like psychiatricst and dermatologists but no primary care docs who are. I wonder if it's worth traveling all the way into SF for a gay doctor. Then I have to screen him to see if he really knows anything as there are a lot of MD's out there that may have book smarts and a degree but really know nothing about diagnosis or treatment experience with real people.
Bucko, I had a female doctor and had the same experience you did with her being very distant and unsypathetic to gay male health issues. She lasted about 2 visits.
As mentioned by a previous poster, there are locally-published directories of gay and/or gay-friendly professional services. Here in SoFla they are called
The Gay Yellow Pages; I've also seen them referred to as
The Pink Pages back up in New England. Do a Google search with either of those titles in the matrix along with your county and state. You should be able to come up with something.
Traveling to SF may wind up being your best option from a health perspective, even if it isn't from a convenience perspective. I have an HIV+ good friend who lives in a small town about 250 miles west of Sydney in Australia; he travels there by train once every 3-4 months as his current PCP, a straight woman, FWIW, offers him the best both in care and in rapport.
"You got issues with me being gay?"
What professional doctor is going to answer, "Yeah, I hate homos, and refuse to treat them." or admit that they'd rather not deal with homo patients?
Rikter8, believe it or not some people, including doctors, get gossed out by homosexuals and want nothing to do with them. Yes. Funny, huh?
This is not just important with PCPs, but specialists as well:
I had a GI specialist who came with an excellent reputation but turned out to be so squeamish about gay health issues that I eventually needed to swap him out: he was convinced that my wasting was caused by parasites I'd contracted while eating ass, an act he found abhorrent and referred to repeatedly as "unsafe, risky sex", a description generally reserved among pros for activities which put one at risk for HIV transmission. As an aside, his horror of HIV was also plainly obvious, too. If it weren't for his reputation with my PCP (the woman I've described elsewhere as "the worst" in my career as an HIV patient), I'd have switched out immediately. After months of submitting stool samples (all of which tested negative for parasites), I was vindicated when we finally switched to a less toxic HIV med and the garden-hose diarrhea ceased within 48 hours completely
Another time I had an especially painful and irritating sebaceous cyst under my right nipple and received a referral from a dermatologist (otherwise very cool with gay men's health concerns) for a surgeon who needed to remove the cyst sac. At the time, I was extremely vocal about the importance of my nipples as an element of my sexual gratification, going so far as to tell him point blank: "I have three sexual organs, my penis and each of my nipples: each is as important as the other. It's extremely important that you understand that I need to retain all nipple tissue, not just for looks but for my ability to perform sexually".
I am completely hard-wired :wink:
The doctor (like nearly every surgeon I've ever met) was overconfident to the point of arrogance, and I should have shopped around. Though the operation was a success from the perspective of full eradication of the cyst and its sac, I lost about 1.3 of the areola of my right nipple, which involves extremely sensitive tissue and, once healed, I'd felt that he'd mutilated me and permanently diminished my sexual pleasure (true on both points, to a certain degree).
Shortly thereafter I consulted a customer of mine with whom I'd built an excellent professional/quasi-personal rapport, who specialized in breast reconstruction following mastectomies; as she deals exclusively with female patients, it had never occurred to me to have consulted her. When I showed her my scarred nipple and the amount of lost tissue, she was shocked and horrified; when she asked me the name of the surgeon, she got extremely quiet, as they frequently collaborate with specific patients and knew him well. The only thing that I could really get out of her was that he's unbearably arrogant, generally highly skilled, and, in this case, did not understand why my nipples were such as issue, otherwise he'd have never operated as he did. Looking down and away, she voiced regret that I hadn't thought to consult her, as she both understood the concept of "hard-wired tits" and equally understood my anger over feeling mutilated.
A gay doctor would have understood, too. FWIW, this all took place at Yale-New Haven Hospital, which has the best reputation in the area, and New Haven, CT is considered an extremely progressive, gay-friendly place to live.
