That’s called the “milieu” which is just a fancy term for the general vibe of the therapeutic environment.

And yeah, hospitals SUCK at that. They’d never let actual greenery in the units because of their potential to harbor bugs or trigger allergies, but the plain/sterile look of everything makes it feel pretty alien to most patients.

Pediatric hospitals are the only ones that get it right - the walls are colorful and filled with happy imagery; the ceiling lights often have inserts that make them look like little patches of blue sky and clouds.

Idk why hospitals that care for adults always look so damn depressing. That’d be a great project idea, to get some pediatric hospital interior decorators to do their thing in other facilities!

Previous poster specified “medics” which I understood as the people on the actual units providing care; and their reluctance to teach skills without the foundation of knowledge that enables those skills. My take was to put myself in their shoes and consider why - the very obvious answer being that doing so can cause harm. The number of bigots working the front lines is of course higher than zero, but also a very clear minority, so jumping to that as the answer to why they behave a certain way around trans people is not correct.

You’re getting more into all the bullshit that influences healthcare at the systemic level: administration, politics, religion… and your right, the answers there get a lot more nefarious, but are very much not the people the previous poster or I was discussing.

also stuff like DIY medicine, it would help me greatly as a trans person if medics stopped policing medical knowledge and taught us their skills instead.

The problem there is that the skills and knowledge go hand-in-hand, and something being safe vs not is dependent on it being used correctly. If you’re encountering reluctance from medical folks to give you DIY resources, it’s most likely from the fear of giving you advice that’ll turn around and fuck you up. And we don’t want to fuck you up. But as you mentioned, the longer term consequences (suicide) potentially far exceed fucking up a shot… like degradation of your subcutaneous tissue because something that was supposed to be injected intramuscular was erroneously injected into the fat, causing it to break down and leaving you with a nasty pit (clinically minor, but disfiguring). Or failing to instruct you to sanitize the stopper and your injection site with alcohol pads, leading to necrotizing fasciitis, (which can kill you).

All that said, I agree with you - you’re more than capable of understanding those risks and taking the time to learn both the skills and the knowledge to mitigate them. Whether or not to take that risk is solely up to you. What I’d advise is to take a deep dive into literally every step of the process: The DIY guide you found said to use one needle to draw the solution and another one to inject… why? With an inch and a half needle… why? that’s a 27 gauge… why? Says inject it into your thigh… why? At a 90* angle… why? What do you do if something goes wrong? How can you even tell if something’s gone wrong? You get the gist. The skill of actually giving a shot is the easy part - understanding the ‘why’ gets crazy complicated.

Numbers and such pulled out of my ass - I don’t know squat about estrogen, so real instructions will almost certainly be different. But if you’re doing it DIY, you really do need to become your own nurse. (and if that stuff comes naturally to you, get your ass into nursing school!!).

Having never given estrogen before, I’m pretty sure you already know more about it than I do, but if any of your DIY instructions seem odd or even wrong, feel free to bounce it off me and I’d be happy to share what insight I have.

Broken clock spiel.