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lesfemale:

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 know this post is already long but here’s a pretty good article about how gender bias in medicine is quite literally killing women. it focuses a lot on heart attacks but it applies to all areas of medicine

We were lucky that when my sister got an ovarian cyst the worst thing we had to deal with was a long wait. It was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure it was mistaken for cramps first, then it got worse. Although the doctors mistook it for appendicitis, and had it been that her appendix likely would have ruptured by the point she got in the operating room.

This story involves me but I was a kid so it is also about my mother. As a child, I had chronic bladder infections. I mean, a couple dozen over a few years, some so bad it hurt to walk. My mom took me to my doctor many, many times, eventually losing her shit when he wouldn’t believe her that something more was up. (She once saw my chart when my doctor left it open on the counter. It had the note “mother is difficult” on it.) The doctor finally referred us to a urologist, who said I had the worst bladder infection he had ever seen in a juvenile. (The urologist was great. Not only did he believe me and my mother and actually order tests and whatnot, he was kind and friendly. He let me look through his microscope at my urine sample and gave me pictures of the inside of my bladder and a printout of my heartbeat. I still have them.) It turned out that I had a minor malformation in my bladder that took a single, incredibly minor operation to fix. Like, it took less than an hour and didn’t require general anesthesia. I’ve only had one bladder infection since then, and it was several years later. I went through years of pain and embarrassment and antibiotics because the doctor thought my mother was overreacting.

At the same time, I also had an unrelated issue with the muscles of my urethral sphincter that caused pants/bed wetting long after it was socially/developmentally acceptable. It also took a ridiculously long time to treat and again, the treatment was incredibly simple – two muscle dilation procedures that took 20 minutes.

Bladder issues are no fucking fun. Neither is you or your child being dismissed for legitimate medical issues, especially when they are so easily diagnosed and treated.

(Due to the many, MANY urine samples I had to give as a child, I can now basically pee on command.)

When I was twelve and still presented entirely female I had massive side pain like someone was stabbing me, and is throw up constantly. 2 doctors said it was psychosomatic until the third did a quick test and found that I had stage 2 liver cancer.