Real Conversations With My Doctor
TW! Medical care, controversial takes on treatment plans
DISCLAIMER: I am not anti birth control. If it works for you, that's great! If you doctor thinks it will help you, and you think it will help you, you should try it! Everyone has a right to make decisions about their healthcare and give INFORMED consent to the treatment that they think is best for them. The decisions I make about my treatment may be completely different than the decisions you make about your treatment, and that's okay! You do you, I'll do me. That being said, anyone who attacks me in the comments for my take will be blocked.
Doctor: I think you should try birth control.
Me: No thanks. I have a complicated family history with birth control, and I just got my mental health and body image stabilized and I don't want to risk destabilizing that. What are my other options?
Doctor: You shouldn't be afraid of birth control. It's a standard treatment. There aren't really any risks with trying it, even at a young age. Now, some people gain a weight they can't lose, experience mental health issues and mood swings and need mental health medications to combat that, or experience more pain later in rare cases. But it won't impact your future fertility at all! It's basically risk free
Me: *adds to the mental count of times I've been blatantly gaslit and lied to by medical professionals*
Me: So...I'm still not comfortable trying birth control. I'm setting that as a boundary and it's not open to discussion. What are my other treatment options?
Doctor: I'll run some more tests, and after that we'll review your results and see if you want to reconsider birth control. In the meantime, you can work on losing weight and exercising more, drinking more water and getting more sleep, reducing your sugar and carbs, and retraining your bladder and pelvic floor by using a three hour voiding schedule and doing Kegels for fifteen minutes a day. See you next month!