From the New York Times (it mentions male vs. female gynecologists)
You Think Your Elbow Hurts! Well, Let Me Tell You . . .
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
Published: March 22, 2005
A certain man in New York City, unknown to him, is my medical double. I know this only because for a time he was my patient, too. He had a few of his own medical problems, of course, but he also had most of mine: the seasonal allergies, the sciatica, the elbow tendinitis (first left, then right, then both), the same immensely annoying arthritis in both thumbs and the left big toe.
Our visits required a certain self-control on my part. When he talked about his elbow or his thumbs, I thought irresistibly about my own. But, though we might sneeze in unison, no commiseration took place. The complaints were all on his side, the sympathy and suggestions all on mine.
Such is the unwritten rule in the examining room: ask, but don't tell.
Long ago, I thought I knew better. A patient complained about her sciatica and I then offered a few cogent, humorous reflections on mine. The atmosphere in the room changed instantly; she dropped her eyes and became silent. The experiment had clearly been a mistake.
Later, I could think of a million reasons why: perhaps she thought I was minimizing her complaints; perhaps she thought I was bored with them; perhaps she hadn't taken an hourlong trip on two subways just to listen to someone else whine. Perhaps she simply liked to think of her doctors as invincible.
If so, she was part of a long tradition. Even Hippocrates specified that the ideal physician should be plump and healthy, presumably in order to heal others by glowing example alone. Although doctors have acquired better tools in the years since, the therapeutic pedestal persists.
Patients often take pride in the vigor and prosperity of their medical caretaker, preferring not necessarily plumpness, but certainly not too many visible signs of wear and tear. And doctors are notoriously loath to confess any illness to themselves or their families, let alone their patients.
Yet, everyone knows that for a true understanding of both illness and the medical care system, nothing substitutes for a personal tour of the territory. Doctor after doctor emerges from an injury or illness with a whole new take on the misery of patienthood.
And even in the relatively trivial realm of small aching joints, who better to minister to your thumbs than someone whose own also throb?
But if familiarity with an illness can breed empathy, it can breed more complicated emotions too, on both sides of the table.
About half of all women, surveys show, prefer female gynecologists. They liken male gynecologists to auto mechanics who do not drive: technicians with an interest in the machinery but never the experience of stalling in the exit lane of a busy shopping mall. Female gynecologists know not only what it all looks like, but also how it feels.
Or do they?
More than a few friends and patients have told me they find just the opposite to be true. They say the women are too flip and dismissive, while men take their problems more seriously.
Possibly men - men of an inherently sympathetic nature, that is - never having had gynecological problems themselves, can only respect the descriptions they are given. If anyone is predisposed to snap, "Oh, pull up your socks, a Pap smear isn't so bad," it may well be someone who has had one herself.
The tension between the subjective and the objective in medicine never lets up for a moment. Personal experience of illness may stretch the doctor's mind in unexpected ways - but only if that mind is one that can be stretched.
In a mind not inclined to think beyond its comfort zone, a personal illness may limit the imagination to just a single variation on the theme.
A doctor with diabetes may have an appreciation for all the minor miseries involved - or may grow exasperated at people who can't stomach doing their own finger sticks, because he can do his just fine. A doctor may be laid low for months by bypass surgery, or may breeze through, and feel that everyone else should too.
A patient may listen to a doctor talking about her sciatica, and hear not the sympathy intended, but rather a subtle accusation: I have your problem, and yet here I am, uncomplaining, at work. So what's that disability of yours all about anyway?
My medical double and I had no such misunderstandings. He was an articulate man, and his pains sounded exactly like mine felt (and responded to exactly the same drugs). The experience of listening to him was extraordinary. For a few moments during his visits, the examining room glowed with Technicolor and throbbed with Dolby stereo surround sound. Then he left and everything settled back down again to normal.
ROTFLMAO! 
