I am an ally, it's true.

Yesterday I met a woman. She intimidated me as soon as I laid eyes on her. She was tall (and I mean TALL. To be fair, I met her when I was sitting down. And I'm really pretty small to begin with, so anyone over 5"7' is a giant to me.) and had this air about her that exuded confidence and intelligence. I just knew that she would be the type of person to leave a lasting impression.

I got to hear her life story...she grew up in New York going to a school of ballet and a performing arts school. She trained with the ROTC as a sharp shooter and even tried out for the Olympics! She got a bachelor's degree, several master's degrees and even a doctorate. She's fluent in something like 5 languages. She married the love of her life. She has helped to raise 25 foster children. She has published numerous journal articles about international relations (some articles are even written and published in languages other than English!). She is a professor. And her life story goes on...

Moral of the story: she is awesome. I hope to accomplish 1/4 of the things she has with my life as she has with hers! I was absolutely right about her leaving an impression on my life! I guess I forgot to mention something about her though. This incredible woman is a male to female transgendered person.

Our clinical skills classes yesterday were discussing LGBT** issues in healthcare. After we talked with the wonderful woman, we got to hear from a M4 student who recently has come out as gay. It was interesting to hear his perspective as a newly out person as compared with the woman whose process of coming out/gender reassignment was over 40 years long.

I think it's really great that UNMC talks about LGBT healthcare (caveat: I wish that we talked about stigmas and discrimination against LGBT persons within medical field more, but we don't really do the whole touchy-feely conversations here), because apparently there are not a whole lot of medical schools that even acknowledge that there might be differences in the way that we care for persons of this population. One conversation is definitely better than zero conversations!

Honestly, I was nervous about how my classmates would respond to our speakers yesterday, but today I heard an overall positive response, which was great! I think that it was the first time that many of my classmates had any contact with a transperson (or a parent of a transperson). The way that our small groups operated fostered a very open and inviting atmosphere for questions which I think was very helpful to have the least judgmental response from students.

We were presented some data from a recent study conducted in Nebraska of many LGBT persons during our lecture and I found it surprising the number of LGBT persons who did not tell their physician their sexual orientation (many claimed that they were afraid of being stigmatized by their doc, that they didn't believe it mattered or that they were afraid of being outed by their doc/someone in the office). As someone who is a doc-wannabe and an ally, I hope that my patients feel comfortable coming out to me, so that I can provide the best care possible for them. But I also recognize that the process of coming out is a very personal decision, so I won't force it on them either.

One of the things I am most grateful to my parents for is completely normalizing same sex relationships when I was growing up. I truly didn't even realize that it was apparently a "bad" thing until late middle school or early high school. Some of my best and closest friends are in the LGBT community and I absolutely cannot imagine my life without them in it or with them thinking they needed to stay closeted around me.

I am an ally, it's true. So if you want to talk, hit me up. Heck, if you want to talk and you're not part of the LGBT community, hit me up too. I don't really care what I talk about, let's be real, I just love talking. And listening!

**I know that there is some debate within the community about which letters to be included within the acronym. I am using only "LGBT" because they are the most well known and the most accessible to persons who may not know much about the LGBTQIA (etc) movement. The acronym could include, but is not limited to, any of the following: Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender/Trans-sexual/Transvestite, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Ally/Asexual, Pansexual/Polyamorous, Unsure/Undecided, Curious, Other/Omnisexual, Same Gender Loving, etc.