Medical doctor, working in the NHS, UK. There was a time when I thought a “real” doctor shouldn’t be “broken”, that patients wouldn’t take someone like me seriously if I can’t speak perfectly. That was at a time when I was intensely ashamed, trying everything I could to hide this “defect”. Then I discovered the stammering community, the disability pride movement (I have friends who have other disabilities as well as being a PWS), and the stammering pride movement. I met other doctors who stuttered openly and proudly, and I realised how messed up my assumptions were. Like why tf should I deprive my patients of my skills just because I sound a lil bit funny lol. Imagine if people with cerebral palsy gave up their job because they “walk funny”. Now I stutter openly, on days when my stutter is more pronounced, I’ll tell colleagues or patients “by the way I have a stammer, it’s just how I speak” so they know it’s my normal way of speaking, and not because of being nervous or unconfident. And since I’ve been doing that, it’s not been holding me back. I say whatever I wanna say, and no one has been anything but kind and supportive. Crazy how so many of the fears I had were mostly in my head, and most people don’t actually care about our stutter as much as we think, and sometimes it just takes a lil disclosure and frank conversation to clear any assumptions they had.