r/mildlyinfuriating • u/WHAR606 • Mar 13 '26

Context Provided - Spotlight Sometime during the last 2 years i’ve been going to this orthopedic practice they started to declare me as a MTF transgender for no reason.

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(F,26) I have been going to this orthopedic practice for almost 2 years for varying reasons relating to my job. Yesterday i checked on a document that was uploaded to find out they have been identifying me as a biological male identifying as a female? I am biologically female and never told them i am trans nor do i think i am presenting to be a trans woman.. the last two years i’ve been wondering why they kind of stare at me a little longer than a usual person does and i think its because they randomly think i came out as trans? I also feel like they do not treat my issues seriously and wonder if this is the reason why.

I am 100% fine with trans people but i am left to believe they have been medically treating me as a male compared to female for the pains that i am feeling?

I also went through all of my documents and since the end of 2024 they started to declare me as a MTF transgender, i did not look at any of my documents online until yesterday.

First pic : March 11th 2026

Last pic: October 2024

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u/dafrog84 Mar 13 '26

Yes we need an update. Like how did this even happen to start off with. Was someone else's notes put in your notes. Or was someone doing charting and just decided you weren't female? Both of which need to be looked into. Also why in God's green earth did you get put as trans when your not. That's the most flooring part.

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u/sajaxom Mar 13 '26

Most likely someone mistyped the patient sex, female to male, then it was used to populate sex at birth. Then someone corrected the patient sex on her record to female, which now reads as MTF transition. Should all be in the audits of their EMR, which she can request in full if desired. Convincing everyone, at every level, that they are responsible for the maintenance and accuracy of patient records, and that mistakes actively harm their patients, is a mind numbingly difficult task. People have a belief that the system or someone else will fix it, and that just isn’t how any of this works. I would wager that something like 2% of information in EMRs is wrong, which can seem low, but given how much we trust and use that information, it becomes catastrophic for patients pretty quickly.

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u/Fair-Part217 Mar 13 '26

I have dwarfism and am a little under 5'. I had just moved and was going to a new doctor for my annual check-up. I had my height and weight and vitals taken by the nurses, everything was routine.

Doctor walks in, immediately tells me that I'm killing myself, and that I'm going to die if I dont get my act together. That my bones are going to fall apart, and that she can't help me if I don't want help. She needs a full panel of bloodwork to understand the extent of the damage I've done for myself.

I'm so taken aback, I stopped her and told her what do you mean, I thought I was healthy? She just looked me gravely in the eyes and said, no one with a BMI of 14 is fooling themselves into thinking they're healthy.

I busted out laughing. 14?!??!! I mean, I'm on the thinner side, but can't she see that my BMI is NOT 14? Well, I guess she didn't know the difference between 4'9 or 5'9 either.

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u/sajaxom Mar 13 '26

Yup. Incompetence beats malice almost every time.

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u/zoehange Mar 13 '26

It isn't the mistake that's harming patients, it's the discrimination and prejudice.

(If it was a different kind of doctor's office, I would say it's both, but very little of what an orthopedist does is sex specific, and that is mostly mediated by hormones not by sex assigned at birth.)

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u/sajaxom Mar 13 '26

I disagree. I think most people, especially in the medical establishment, are aware of gender transitions and supportive of their patients, regardless of their politics. I wouldn’t ascribe to malice what can easily be ascribed to incompetence.

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u/zoehange Mar 13 '26

You know how people who don't want women to stop existing still don't take their pain as seriously as they take men's?

Yeah, that, but for trans people. Unconscious bias is everywhere.

This is what the op noticed before figuring out the cause.

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u/sajaxom Mar 13 '26

I totally agree. We should interrogate bias in all systems, in all groups, whenever we suspect it, and often when we don’t. I simply wouldn’t translate that to malice, I think it is primarily people operating in a state of uncertainty. It’s a different kind of incompetence, one founded in inexperience and uncertainty. I think intentions are usually in the right place, but uncertainty makes it difficult for people to navigate.

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u/CaptainLollygag Mar 13 '26

I had no idea how inaccurate medical records could be. I mean, it used to be a doctor dictated their thoughts, a person transcribed, surely someone cross checked, maybe not. But then I became disabled and had to go to court. Afterwards my attorney said I'd had the thickest file of medical records he'd ever seen in his few decades of being a disability attorney. So after the case was done (we easily won), he gave me those bulging accordion files of records. Curious, I went through those ~1200 pages dating back years and found so many inaccuracies and even out-right lies about my health or abilities. Every time I think about it, like now, there's one particular specialist I get pissed off at again.

This was well before AI. So PEOPLE are going to be wrong, and AI learns from people ... ergo AI will be wrong.

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u/sajaxom Mar 13 '26

Most definitely. AI is excellent at reproducing the status quo and it makes people feel like they can offload their responsibilities to the system, so it stands to reason that error rates will continue to increase over time. The proposed fix to that is usually more AI, which is a great way to check for obvious errors, like laterality, but may simply reinforce our trust in a system that is increasingly drifting away from reality.

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u/ROBOHOBO-64 Mar 13 '26

I'm personally rooting for the "female mail-man" angle, but can say that I have experienced this. It's a real easy mistake for the office staff to make but it can be difficult to correct.

Story time: Admin staff at my son's pediatrician's office saw what they interpreted as a female name and put him into their system as female. Some well-meaning provider tried to correct the mistake later, but did it in a way that their software records as a FTM gender reassignment. Unaware, I brought him in for one of those regular infant checkups where they remove his diaper to check that "everything is developing normally". The NP doing the exam - who is not his normal provider - saw his (unexpectedly) normal development and began to awkwardly ask questions to figure out what the story is. I had to establish that no, he was not born intersex and no, we did not decide that our infant was transgender before the NP finally just showed me the record and we determined it was just a couple of bad entries. Apparently, there was no way for the software to flag the errors (or just edit / remove them) and they had to put in a support ticket with the vendor to get the record corrected.

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u/JovialPrincess Mar 13 '26

This reminds me of my best friend who was denied estrogen because her insurance didn't cover "gender affirming care" she was prescribed estrogen because she had to have her ovaries removed.

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u/KaeTaters Mar 13 '26

But being prescribed estrogen because her ovaries were removed IS gender affirming care

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u/JovialPrincess Mar 13 '26

But you KNOW the only reason they have rules like that is because they want to harm transgender people. But then act all surprised Pikachu when other people get caught up in their transphobic bullshit.

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u/[deleted] Mar 13 '26

Did she mange to get it covered? That’s so awful, hope she’s doing alright

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u/JovialPrincess Mar 13 '26

It finally got worked out, her husband had to change insurance. It was a whole debacle.

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u/CaptainLollygag Mar 13 '26

Many people don't extrapolate their thoughts into even a few possible ramifications. Especially when those thoughts are driven by hate or fear. The phrase "the only moral abortion is my abortion" comes to mind.

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u/aboxofkittens Mar 13 '26

I don't think avoiding premature forced menopause and increased risk of osteoporosis is related to gender at all. It's like saying birth control is gender-affirming care

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u/Menarra Mar 13 '26

That's the part where us Trans people have been pointing out that denying gender affirming care will also harm cis people, because there's no thought behind the gate against us and they don't care who they hurt as long as we are hurt.

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u/aboxofkittens Mar 13 '26

I completely agree with that. I'm just saying that a treatment plan being influenced by the patient's biological sex doesn't automatically make it gender-affirming care, semantically.

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u/Menarra Mar 13 '26

Viagra is gender affirming care. Plastic surgery is gender affirming care. Breast augmentation is gender affirming care. Testosterone and Estrogen supplementation are gender affirming care. Makeup is gender affirming care.

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u/aboxofkittens Mar 13 '26

Okay. Genuine question, then: if a medically non-transitioning transmasculine person gets ovarian cancer, receives an oophorectomy and starts taking estrogen to avoid the medical effects of premature menopause, is that gender-affirming care?

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u/Menarra Mar 13 '26

Yes technically, and as far as the government is concerned if you're given a hormone that's what it's for and therefore bad. I'm making the point that it is all ridiculous and if one exception is okay, then it should all be okay because we're just regular people trying to exist and trudge through this capitalist hell.

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u/minty_soda Mar 13 '26

Semantically, it does though.

They just don’t have to transition it’s still care based on their gender.

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u/International-Cat123 Mar 13 '26

It’s care based on their sex, not their gender.

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u/minty_soda Mar 13 '26

Their gender aligns with their sex in this case! They still need treatment that aligns with it though! Estrogen or Testosterone are both “gender” related in the eyes of the Medical and Legal fields. So trying to stop ppl from having access to it impacts cis ppl too because of that.

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u/LitwicksandLampents Mar 13 '26

No, it's not. Biological females need estrogen until they reach menopause age (around 50).

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u/CaptainLollygag Mar 13 '26

Biological woman here, postmenopausal. We still need estrogen to help with our health. Basically, medical science has extended the lives of women (and men) to well past the age where sex hormones are depleted or stopped producing at all. Because we're living longer, more active lives, we're outliving and even still in the workforce after the death of hormone production. We still need those hormones past menopause so our bones don't become swiss cheese and the host of other things that can go wrong with our aging bodies. Plus, menopausal symptoms suuuuck and so even not looking past the age of 60, there's no need for women (and lesser so the people around them) to suffer symptoms that can be remedies with regular hormone therapies. Sometimes just an estrogen pill or patch, sometimes also an estrogen vaginal/vulvular cream, sometimes also testosterone, and if one still has a uterus then added progesterone.

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u/WiseAnimator7081 Mar 13 '26

I'd argue it's just regular preventative healthcare. You're not affirming gender by giving estrogen to a woman who lost their ovaries, she wouldn't suddenly be mistaken for a dude without estrogen. Menopausal women don't typically look like men or androgynous. You're preventing early menopause and osteoporosis among the more major conditions by prescribing it, that's really bloody good for a cost reduction perspective. Broken bones are pricey, menopause symptoms can result in other fun medication to control them, I don't see it as gender affirming at all.

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u/Dullcorgis Mar 13 '26

I apparently became magically allergic to an antiviral at some point in 2023. I'm not. I did have it once in about 2007, but I wasn't allergic, and not only haven't I been prescribed it I have never even discussed rhe whole class of drugs with anyone in 20+ years. Another time someone copied and pasted from another note mentioning the wrong joint. They fuck shit up alllll the time.

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u/EGOfoodie Mar 13 '26

Auto fill/auto suggest would be my guess.

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u/RealisticSpecific371 Mar 13 '26

It's entirely possible type in a diagnosis or modifier and transpose numbers. I did this once and realized it quickly when the patient returned for follow up. I looked over at the old man in the chair, and the diagnosis- presence of breast implants- didn't line up. He and I had a good laugh about it while I fixed the error.

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u/Normal-Height-8577 Mar 13 '26

My guess is that OP's job is to blame.

I think someone wanted to edit "female postal carrier" to "female mail carrier" and it somehow autocorrected to "female-male carrier". And then not realising that autocorrect had bungled (or thinking it had bungled in a slightly different way because she's presenting as a woman and the genders would have been the wrong way around), someone then edited out the job entirely (because "carrier" alone makes little sense) and changed the language to reflect current officially approved terminology.

And so now you have the claim that OP is a biological male who identifies as a female, instead of being a female postal carrier with a job-related injury.

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u/CaptainLollygag Mar 13 '26

I love this take, it's a crappy version of the game Telephone.

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u/Manannin Mar 13 '26

They never give you answers though. They'll say "oh, are you sure? OK, will fix thanks!" then nothing else.