Anonymous

I’ll be honest with you. Coming out isn’t anything that I really think about when I go to the doctor. My current doctor is an orthopedist and general practitioner … I have had knee surgery in the past, so that was why I chose him. I never really thought about coming out to him as being a gay man, but it just recently happened due to some other medical issues.

I felt like I was getting strep throat, but it really wasn’t strep throat. It steadily got worse, and I was getting this lump on the side of my neck. So I went to the doctor. He originally thought I had an ear infection, so he gave me (an antibiotic) first. I did that for five days and waited a few more days to see if I got any better. I didn’t.

I had (my doctor) look at my throat again and see what what was going on. I got another antibiotic. That didn’t work. I went back, and he wanted to order an MRI to see if anything was really going on. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I got really sick, and I ended up going to the emergency room. That is where, a couple days later, they had diagnosed me with syphilis. And they gave me another antibiotic.

Also at the emergency room, they told me they thought I had lymphoma because of the lump in my throat. That triggered me seeing the ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor. A day or so after …  he did a biopsy there. It came back negative, and then they wanted to operate on me, actually go in and pull out part of my tonsil.

I was on the operating table when they realized I really didn’t have cancer. It was a side effect of syphilis that was causing what was happening in my lymph node.

They had already put me under when the ENT surgeon called the other doctor and talked to him. The surgeon had not thought to ask or really gone through background to determine if this could be something else.

Now I do tell my doctors my background up front. Now my general practitioner is asking questions that he probably should have been asking in the first place. I think that there is a more heightened awareness around my healthcare now.

Doctors are basically diagnosticians, right? They don’t know everything, but the more information you are able to provide them, the better care you will receive. A lot of people, especially in the African-American community, are afraid to go to the doctor or the hospital period.

But there are other things that we need to worry about as a race outside of HIV/AIDS or any sexually transmitted disease, and the only way we are going to mitigate that is by going to the doctors and being upfront and honest.

Coming out to your doctors could save your life. Sharing your experiences with others could save someone else’s. Live your #HealthOutLoud today.