being a female means needing to see 10 different doctors to get a proper diagnosis because they always think you’re exaggerating and/or lying
define proper diagnosis. I mean, does that just mean the diagnosis you want?
no :) it means going to 10 different doctors who disbelieved your symptoms until the 11th found cysts on your ovaries :) which may mean infertility :) sit on a cactus :)
I call bullshit
Of course you do. Like the first 10 doctors. 😒
I call bullshit on the story. If you think you have an issue you should see a specialist not just your PCP.
Like the 4 “specialists” I saw for the crippling numbness in my face and legs I had for over a year while they told me it was “stress”? When it was finally found that I had scars on my brain and spine? Those “specialists” we’re male neurologist who wouldn’t give me an MRI because “women stress too much”. Go fuck yourself.
MY SPINE WAS BROKEN FOR 2 YEARS BECAUSE MY DOCTORS TOLD ME I JUST HAD BAD CRAMPS AND REFUSED TO TAKE XRAYS. FUCK YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. WHEN WILL BOYS REALIZE THEIR EXPERIENCES ARENT STANDARD???? I ALSO LOVE THIS IDEA THAT YOU CAN JUST GO TO A SPECIALIST WHENEVER YOU WANT LOL IF OUR PCP DOESNT BELIEVE US WHEN WE TELL THEM OUR SYMPTOMS THEY ARENT GONNA REFER US TO A SPECIALIST YOU FUCKING MOLDY WALNUT
My parents began noticing something large in my throat, saw a specialist….Guess what? Told me to lose some weight..even though I wasn’t overweight. I would have my period for weeks at a time. Was told that it was teenage hormones and stress.
Two fucking years later I attempted suicide they ran a battery of tests as required and bam! They find out that I have untreated Hashimoto’s. The “thing” was a goiter. Possible symptoms of an untreated thyroid disease is the goiter, unexplained weight gain, and depression. All they had to do was test my blood, but they said young people don’t have thyroid problems. 😒
-Allie
Ten years ago, my mother—who is a pretty tough cookie—started feeling both ridiculously wired, anxious, and incredibly emotional. Every doctor she saw told her she was going through early menopause, even though she was still menstruating. Her health declined to point where she was barely sleeping, losing weight, and crying constantly, which was a huge red flag because my mother never cries. Finally, she went to see another doctor 2.5 hours away who referred her to an endocrinologist. And what did the endocrinologist say? He diagnosed her with one of the most advanced cases of Grave’s Disease he had even seen, and said if she had gone just a few more months without being treated, she could have FUCKING DIED.
Also, it turned out that her thyroid levels had been moving out of the normal range in a progressive pattern for years, but nobody bothered to look at her past test results until after the diagnosis. They would just do a test, see that it was “in the normal range” and leave it at that. She could have caught it before she even had symptoms, instead of basically being accused of having hysteria.
i had a brain aneurysm/hemorrhage ten years ago, doctors still tell me im faking my disability BECAUSE YOU CAN TOTALLY FAKE LIMITED MOVEMENT OF THE LEFT SIDE
My sister had intercranial hypertension which was causing headaches, dizzy spells and loss of vision, and you know what the hospital told her? She was being a hysterical girl and making it up. A few weeks later she spent roughly a month in hospital and had several lumbar punctures to relieve her RECORD HIGH spinal pressure that was causing so much strain on her brain and optic nerves she was being sent blind.
Everytime I see this post (and it’s been a good 5/6 times), it has different stories and experiences of women who have been horribly mistreated by doctors and it just blows my mind that this is so big. It’s absolutely disgusting how terribly women are treated in the medical world and something needs to be done about that.
my friend lea had back pain, then pain in her legs and feet, and then numbness. despite seeing 7 different doctors over 2 years, by the time they found the cancer it was inoperable. chemo and radiation didn’t work. the cancer spread. she died and left behind a 5 year old daughter.
A few years ago I would go through spells where I literally could not stand on my own and I couldn’t get out of bed. I would be freezing and too weak to eat. I would keep having heart palpitations as well. I got up the money to go to a clinic and they told me it was just stress and to basically just work on chilling out. I saved up money for a few weeks to do this and I pretty much get a “chill out” from them.
As time went on it got worse, most noticeably the heart palpitations were happening almost constantly. I went again to a different clinic and was told it was normal and that it was probably stress. They did no tests, and they told me it would “just go away”.
Two weeks later I ended up collapsing going down some stairs, and at the hospital it was discovered that I had such severe anemia that my heart could barely keep up with trying to get enough oxygen to my body. I had developed left ventricular hypertrophy (my heart muscle is too big) and because of them ignoring me and dismissing me I’m at a much higher risk of heart attacks and stroke now.
I went to the doctor with severe intermittent pain in my upper right stomach area that was so bad I had to miss school. Despite the fact that my period has been on a regular 3 month cycle for years, and I still had two months left until my period, my doctor told me it was period related cramps and or indigestion. 2 months later I’m in the hospital getting my gallbladder removed. It was so obstructed that there was gangrene developing my my system.
So…everyone who’s given me shit for that one post (about medicine and equal treatment and shit) can just read this because I’m sick of defending my case.
I got lucky and the first time I ever went to a gyno it was one of the top gynos in the country, who also happens to be a woman. I got diagnosed with PCOS immediately, because it turns out that five years after getting your first period you should not be having three month long breaks between period which then last upwards of twenty days. Then I had problems getting appointments with her and I went to the separate male gynos; not one of them believed me because I didn’t have any symptoms. You want to guess why I didn’t have any symptoms? Because I had been in medication for years and the cysts were gone. Which I told them repeatedly. But not only did they disbelieve me; they didn’t believe one of the foremost experts in the country. Because she happened to be a woman, and I’m woman presenting. Fuck male doctors, seriously.,
Adding my bit in here because I saw “I doubt it” and almost vomited.
Motherfucker come and say “I doubt it” to my fucking face- that’s exactly what two of the fucking specialists my mother took me to said when she told them something was wrong with me. Why did they doubt it? Because I was a fat teenage girl and, in their opinion, I was looking for attention and probably spoiled to boot.
Anyway, now I am 24 and I take medication every fucking day for the chronic thyroid condition that was flooding my brain with chemicals it was never meant to bathe in, which in turn has left me with chronic fatigue, weird ass pains in weird ass places, and depressive episodes. All of which could have been prevented if it didn’t take fucking YEARS for a doctor to look at me and listen.
Oh, and when they did listen? It was my general practitioner. Who noticed that my routine ass blood test was all fucked up.
Several issues here.
1. There’s the most obvious — women don’t get taken as seriously. A woman who comes in with complaints like depression, fatigue, and pain is far more likely to be written off as purely psychological or ascribed to “hormones” (without any attempt to deal with the assumed imbalance).
2. Certain chronic conditions, like many autoimmune diseases, predominantly affect women. So in addition to the difficulty people with chronic conditions have in getting diagnoses, the definite bias against women makes it even harder for women to get the care they need.
3. Some serious problems manifest with different rates and symptoms in women than in men. Nonsmoking women are 3x more likely to get lung cancer than nonsmoking men. Women are far more likely than men to have myocardial infarctions without obstructive coronary disease, but since doctors are trained to look for the signs they’re used to seeing in men, women are frequently sent home instead of getting treated, because it’s not recognised. And symptoms are different in women than in men, too, so the patient herself may not even know it.
4. Drugs are usually tested on male animals and male subjects. Women can react much differently, but too often, male is considered the default, which puts women at risk.
5. Women’s health concerns and diseases that predominantly affect women aren’t seen as being as important as men’s health. We have effective drugs for erectile dysfunction and low male libido, which are inconveniences at worst, but when it comes to the causes and treatments of disorders like endometriosis, which is cripplingly painful, we really don’t know a lot. A lot of women with endometriosis and PCOSand fibroids and other gynaecological problems don’t even know they have these disorders because they go to the doctor and the doctor rolls their eyes and says “well, periods hurt, have you tried Midol?” Their lives and health could be so much better but we just don’t care that much.
6. It’s not as easy as “just go to a specialist.” Depending on the kind of insurance you have, you may have to get referrals from GPs who may or may not take you seriously. Sometimes distance or expense makes this impractical or impossible. And it requires that the patient is either knowledgeable enough to KNOW where to go or the doctor listens to them enough to direct them to the right place.
Here’s a good article I actually just ran across yesterday:
Our cat had all four roommates feeding him each day because he acted like he was starving and we didn’t know that the other roommate already fed him. This was our solution, hopefully he will slim down a bit.
I am actually obsessed with the perception I have of my own self and I need to check myself in the mirror or in a window every time I get the chance because I am scared that my face looks weird, some people mistake it for vanity which is not but no one actually thinks that my face looks weird and no one even notices all the flaws I claim to have and no one thinks my eyes are two different sizes even though I am losing my mind because I think so: an autobiography.
