A story about how doctors dismiss women's physical pain

September 26, 2023 9:31 PM

A story, in cartoon form, about how doctors dismiss women's physical pain.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (33 comments total)

I recently saw a terrific tweet from @sicc_bitcg going around as a screenshot. It reads:

patient: hello, i am in a lot of pain all the time
doctor: hmm. are you just saying that to get attention?
patient: yes. medical attention

Reader, I felt seen.
posted by foxtongue at 10:10 PM on September 26, 2023 [51 favorites]

Aubrey Hirsch is great! An earlier comic from her on Medicine's Women Problem.
posted by the primroses were over at 10:26 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

And, in fact, that earlier comic had its own post, if anyone wants to check that out as well.
posted by the primroses were over at 10:28 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I saw some story by a transman on Tumblr a few weeks ago saying that suddenly everyone paid attention to his pain issues now that he was male.

I'm used to people not believing me in general (I don't even try to talk to doctors, mind you--you don't believe my gag reflex issues, I can certainly puke in your lap and demonstrate?) because I'm an evil shitty lying whore bitch female, but it is exhausting AF. My friend with heart issues has to throw screaming fits periodically to try to get anyone to listen to her.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:32 PM on September 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

From Wil Wheaton's blog - two posts called Thirty-Six Hours and Eighteen Hours, the titles of which collectively refer to how much time his wife Anne was suffering from untreated ovarian torsion. The posts are about her pain and the first two (!) ER doctors' misdiagnosis, and then her final diagnosis and treatment.

I've had ovarian torsion, and it does not fuck around. I went through it for ten hours, but the doctors were at least trying like blazes to figure out WTF was going on the whole time in my case; I cannot believe someone in that much pain was just sent home like she was.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:46 AM on September 27, 2023 [8 favorites]

You know what also adds salt in the wound? When your family doctor is also a woman, and she doesn't believe you either.

I've been trying for months to get a referral for ADHD assessment and she won't do it*, citing that "all kinds of people now they think have ADHD because they watch TikTok."



*also I can't just go out and get another family doctor; we kind of have a crisis up here
posted by Kitteh at 4:20 AM on September 27, 2023 [11 favorites]

Kitteh, my partner got a referral from our excellent family doc (at St Mike's health team), had to pay a clinic several thousand dollars to get their ADHD assessment, and it took almost a year for it to happen with the waiting list and multi-step interview/assessment process.

That said, now that the diagnosis is in hand, the family doc is absolutely on board with dispensing and tweaking meds as needed with no pushback. It's utter bullshit to get those four letters though.

Oddly, our roomie, who is on OW, was able to get a free assessment and diagnosis fairly quickly, along with free meds, which I find perplexing but am very happy about in the end. This is how it should be for everyone. She is SO MUCH HAPPIER and more functional now.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:14 AM on September 27, 2023

I was just discussing this- doctors and women in pain- with a friend yesterday. When we were younger they just dismissed any abdominal pain as menstrual. That's how a friend died of a ruptured appendix.

Now that they can't use the bullshit menstrual cramp reason on post-menopausal women like us they mumble some vague shit about "normal aging".
posted by mareli at 5:57 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

An anecdote, I had a brief (somewhat alarming) chest pain along side dizziness, etc. The Urgent Care asked on a scale on 1-10 what the chest pain had briefly been and pointed to a chart, I said a 6-7? Not the worst it could be but it got me literally up out of my seat. They looked a little startled by this and explained that usually men they've seen will either point to 1-3 or 9-10, thinking that they're doing it out of an abundance of caution or because they're a bit frightened/want to see someone Right Now.

But that level of "oh, they're not really relating this accurately but I'll divine out what the real pain level is" just isn't applied to women.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:03 AM on September 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's like there's just no right way to be a person (woman) needing medical care. I established with a new PCP a few months ago and at the same time wanted to address (at that time) nearly a year of post-covid life-altering fatigue. I wrote up a document listing all the medical changes I'd experienced, even tiny things that I didn't think meant much, because I wanted my new doctor to have all the information she needed.

She started her note with: "She comes in with a multitude of concerns. "

I work in the medical profession and write notes which I know are read by patients/families, and I know the language we use that looks professional but is understood by other clinicians to mean something else. I know EXACTLY what that sentence meant. I tried to be thorough in my communication, and it got interpreted in a totally different way. She wrote me a prescription for an antidepressant.

(She also finished her objective exam section with "poor eye contact" which is fucking hilarious because a) how good of eye contact do you make with someone who's making you cry? and b) I think she herself was making poor eye contact, since I confirmed on later visits that she had no idea I was crying almost that entire visit.)
posted by obfuscation at 6:14 AM on September 27, 2023 [20 favorites]

Some years ago my partner was having symptoms, including pain, that we were trying to get diagnosed, and she had the worst time finding doctors who would listen and take her seriously. Part of that was living in a smaller town where frankly the quality of most doctors wasn't that great. But most of it was the exact bias that the comic describes.

Incredibly angeringly, the only thing that worked was for me to go to every appointment with her and literally repeat her words. Her: "I'm feeling terrible pain." Doctor: "Well, sometimes that can be psychosomatic, or it can just be normal menstrual pain." Me: "She's feeling terrible pain." Doctor: "Oh, that sounds serious, in that case let's order a bunch of tests and I'll give you a referral."

So in one sense, yay, it worked, she finally got treated seriously. But on the other hand, what about someone who doesn't have a male partner who is able to get off of work to go to every single medical appointment for months and dutifully repeat what she is saying again and again? And good lord, why should it take having a dude in the room in order for a basic statement like "I am in pain" to be believed?
posted by Dip Flash at 6:21 AM on September 27, 2023 [30 favorites]

There’s also an uncomfortable (ha) flip side to this, which is that I think on some level society just expects women to live with pain - I suspect it connects to the whole Judeo-Christian “curse of Eve” b.s. where women just are expected to (or worse, deserve to) suffer for existing, and that’s just seen as normal - even among women - because “that’s what we do.” Small derail, but ever since I first saw them I can’t stop thinking about the videos that a period pain company was making about a year ago, going to events with a period simulator and sharing reaction videos of men trying it. And how - even though ostensibly the point was that pain isn’t okay and we need to have that conversation and do something about it - time after time the takeaway felt like women basically saying, “man up, we do this every month,” and laughing it off. That because a certain amount of pain comes with the territory, and we’re just societally expected to be breezy about it, when we do speak up about pain, it sounds like we’re whining. That doctors could also hear it that way is unconscionable. But it has to stop.
posted by Mchelly at 6:24 AM on September 27, 2023 [16 favorites]

I broke my foot once. In the moment it happened was painful and the whole foot was deeply bruised. But I thought the pain was consistent with a sprain (it was tolerable to me) and I followed NHS advice, yet I still couldn't put my full weight on my foot for weeks afterwards. When I finally managed to get a GP appointment, I gave an accurate but brief description of the incident and the doctor poked at my foot with the kind of gentle poking I'd give my dough to check if it was springy and said, "Nah, you're fine." He continued to dismiss my concerns with a bemused smirk, as if I was a child unwittingly asking too-naive questions. I remember thinking I should seize the opportunity to ask him about feeling exhausted and dizzy, and fainting. He told me, and I wish I was joking, "It must have been something you ate." "For six months?" I asked but I think he had already moved on. (Yes, I was anaemic but how would he have known?)
posted by mkdirusername at 6:30 AM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also: Why doesn’t my doctor believe I’m in pain? "Within a few hours of giving birth to my son this year, I felt severe pain in my lower back. I alerted my medical team ... They said it was probably gas... It was only after two excruciating days of pain — and urging my doctors to look further — that a CT scan revealed a large kidney stone trapped in my ducts. ... I know health care providers who think people yell or cry when in severe pain. But in reality, many people display subtle physical reactions to intense pain." By Trisha Pasricha (MD).
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 7:18 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

My wife has had tremendous gut pain for months. She's been diagnosed with a hiatal hernia. They have medical imaging of it. She also did tests and found considerable H. pylori bacteria in her stomach, which may indicate a possible ulcer, too.

And yet. And YET. The doctors say "well, it can't be that bad."

The first doctor to start to take her seriously did so after he palpated her abdomen where she said it hurt, she asked him to stop, he did not in fact stop, and I do not want to think about how much he had to pay for either the cleaning or replacement of his pants, socks and shoes when she emptied her stomach on him from the pain. She's now waiting for a gastroenterologist to check her out with a gastroscopy.

Five doctors, and it took vomiting in pain for one to take her seriously. That's absolutely ridiculous.
posted by mephron at 7:24 AM on September 27, 2023 [25 favorites]

A 20-something colleague was having pain and it kept getting dismissed as period pain or anxiety (!!!) and it turned out to be cancer. She had to have surgery and chemo and I'm so glad she's in remission but soooo mad about her experience.
posted by misskaz at 8:17 AM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

...ever since I first saw them I can’t stop thinking about the videos that a period pain company was making about a year ago, going to events with a period simulator and sharing reaction videos of men trying it.

I was going to share that first video with the cops if nobody else did, because of this dialogue:

Woman: “Would you want to be on duty with this sort of pain?”
…
Cop: “I definitely wouldn’t come in.”
Woman: “You’d call in sick?”
Cop: “Of course, yeah.”
…
Woman: “I got bad news for you: your boss doesn’t give a fuck.
posted by BrashTech at 9:04 AM on September 27, 2023 [12 favorites]

I do not want to think about how much he had to pay for either the cleaning or replacement of his pants, socks and shoes when she emptied her stomach on him from the pain.

If I were you I would be thinking of that regularly and with great delight. Occasionally while masturbating.

fucker got what he deserved, oh yeaaaaaaaaaaah
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:15 AM on September 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

I was just talking with a friend about how I am regularly willing to pay hundreds of dollars and fly to another coast - and I am not by any means the sort of person who can really afford this - to receive medical care just to have a doctor who doesn’t think I’m a liar. I have been going to her for six years and it’s been the best medical care of my life. If she leaves and goes to another practice I will follow her even if I have to pay under the table in cash. I’m just so sick of being disbelieved.
posted by corb at 9:38 AM on September 27, 2023 [4 favorites]

Honestly the craziest thing about this is that for over a decade I have agreed: women do not get adequate medical care, while simultaneously believing I mostly HAD received adequate care.

I remember, with clarity, the doctor who I saw, in a new town, to say "hi yep, diagnosed depression, been on these antidepressants for 5 yrs, just need a refill," so he could say, "have you tried exercise and getting outside more? I don't know that you need antidepressants." I cried when I left his office, and yes, I found another doctor.

Yet I stupidly carried on going yep, haven't been impacted yet by this "women not getting taken seriously by docs" thing. That was just one bad doc, right? One idiot!

The migraines, the bloated feeling, the terrible horrible no good sinuses (one allergist said she was surprised I could smell anything), the stomach issues, the aches, every flu/virus/cold almost killing me, all that, gosh, that was just life, right? The waking up every night because I was dry coughing until tears ran down my face, that was just allergies, right? Not drinking enough water? The lung function check was fine, the allergist pointed to my allergy to cats, they all told me "lose weight, drink more water" and I nodded and coughed every night and never had a decent sleep for a decade. A DECADE.

Then I heard about those food sensitivity tests, and yeah, the reviews were kind of mixed, and it was expensive, but what if? What if I had a food allergy? It was the one thing no docs had ever explored, and most had dismissed it. So I ordered it and sent it off and it came back with sensitivity to wheat and gluten. Huh. So I made an appt w my doctor and told her about it, and she listed off the symptoms of celiac and I HAD EVERY ONE, and she went, "Oh why don't you try cutting out gluten for 30 days, real strict, and see how you do?"

4 days into it my sinuses opened up and I swear it was like the angels sang, and suddenly I could feel cool air hitting my sinuses for the first time in ten years. After a week I was sleeping all night and waking up feeling like I had actually slept. I lost ten pounds without even trying. I had ENERGY. I could think straight. Sure enough the "simple blood test" came back, and yes, I have celiac. The simple blood test no other doctor had ever thought to do.

My reaction to all this should have been "damn you medicine, DAMN YOU for making me live like that for a decade." But instead my brain went, "oh haha you dumb for not getting that food sensitivity test sooner" or "for not specifically asking docs about gluten" and "gosh that doc who ordered the blood test was the best" even though I HAD ASKED HER TO DO IT.

All this to say holy crap, this is real, and this is a huge issue, and if you are over there thinking you haven't been impacted, you probably have and you just haven't discovered it yet.

(for the record this included both US and Canadian doctors)
posted by routergirl at 9:56 AM on September 27, 2023 [13 favorites]

Incredibly angeringly, the only thing that worked was for me to go to every appointment with her and literally repeat her words.

For at least a year I've been trying to write a 10 minute play about an invention that will create a tall deep voiced white cisgender male hologram* that you hold up in front of you (done as an infomercial) while you say things, and then you are Believed and Something Is Done About It. I've never been able to finish it because from what I've read of ten minute plays, you have to introduce a problem and solve it, and um.... there is no solution to this problem, really. Other than having a straight tall deep voiced cisgender white male (who believes you!) to translate for you.

* I note that the best results we got improving anything at work was having a boss like that, as the rest of my career I've only had female bosses and one POC guy boss. I really miss that guy, but they drove him off when they wouldn't promote him.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:28 AM on September 27, 2023 [11 favorites]

When I was an infant, I was lactose intolerant. As you might imagine, I was ill quite often. My pediatrician told my mother that it was normal for babies to be fussy and not to worry about it. I am the third kid in my family, so it's not like my mother didn't have a baseline for comparison. But Mom was clearly just worrying too much. Then she had a phone call with her father, also a pediatrician. Over the phone, from three thousand miles away, my grandfather diagnosed the problem immediately.
posted by Karmakaze at 12:24 PM on September 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

For at least a year I've been trying to write a 10 minute play about an invention that will create a tall deep voiced white cisgender male hologram* that you hold up in front of you (done as an infomercial) while you say things, and then you are Believed and Something Is Done About It. I've never been able to finish it because from what I've read of ten minute plays, you have to introduce a problem and solve it, and um.... there is no solution to this problem, really. Other than having a straight tall deep voiced cisgender white male (who believes you!) to translate for you.

I would watch this play and I hope you write it!
posted by Dip Flash at 1:28 PM on September 27, 2023

I'd love to, but nobody has been able to solve the problem of how to finish it for years, myself and anyone else I've begged for help included. Probably because IRL it's an unsolvable problem.

Maybe I should do an AskMe about it?
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:47 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

There’s always the ‘wear a moustache’ option? (Can’t find link to the comic that’s from, sorry.)
posted by eviemath at 1:56 PM on September 27, 2023

jenfullmoon, I can think of endings, but they're not good, uh, viable social solutions....

I have to find a new PCP next year. Maybe I start learning to throw my voice and get a hand puppet?
posted by winesong at 3:04 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah....there really isn't a solution to this. Biology, socialization, whatever else in our culture all leads to "bitches be lyin'," more or less, and maybe the entirety of humanity would have to drastically change on a fundamental level to fix it? My play has the hologram noticing this and pointing out how sad it is that this has to happen (like, the hologram gets why he's needed and doesn't like it, he's sympathetic to the situation), but then.... I got nothing as to where to go for another five minutes.

We have so much "weirdness is bad, kill it" in our psyches and culture, I think. Anything that isn't straight cis white male has some kind of weirdness statistics* to it, and the more weirdness statistics you've got, the worse it gets for you. Anything else is a higher difficulty level. And that's not even getting into personality traits. I'm demographically un-weird except for being cisgender female and yet I still got issues because of my personality. We get set off by people who aren't like us, it seems to be built in, and it seems to take exposure to "weird" to realize "oh, this won't hurt me" and for people to settle down and be accepting.

* On a related note, I was going to call this "weirdness points," Googled for it, and got this. I realize That Dude is controversial, but I think he had a point with this: "Someone with dozens of unconventional beliefs and habits will seem too eccentric to be worth paying attention to, but someone who pushes one weird thing while otherwise being respectable has a shot at convincing the people around them to take it seriously too."
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:18 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just had my annual wellness/ physical. I have had chronic fatigue and joint pain for 20+ years; it gets incrementally worse and affects my life pretty adversely. A doc way back took it seriously, but no cause found, and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or CF has no value because there's no treatment. My doctor ignored my concern completely. Her response to my issues with anxiety was to recommend Bach Flower Remedies, a homeopathic floral water, and, No.

Being a woman is exhausting, too.
posted by theora55 at 4:51 PM on September 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'd love to, but nobody has been able to solve the problem of how to finish it for years, myself and anyone else I've begged for help included. Probably because IRL it's an unsolvable problem.

Sometimes the best way to finish a play about an unsolvable problem is simply to end it, and leave the problem unsolved in the play.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:30 PM on September 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had endometriosis. I finally got a hysterectomy. For decades my pain went untreated.

1) the surgery of literally removing my organs from my body was a less painful recovery than spending a week on a period
And
2) I was given opoids to address that pain

I'm so traumatized by how I have been treated about a known condition that causes chronic pain. My relationship with medical professionals will always be of mistrust, because I have zero doubt that if/when something else comes up, it will also ignored, minimized and devalued.


27 years in pain. For what? So doctors didn't feel uncomfortable preforming a hysterectomy on a young person? So that doctors could prove that they weren't handing out pain medication prescriptions and protect their reputations? To be disbielved, ignored, shamed and blamed?

It has been four months since I returned to work from my hysterectomy. I haven't missed a day of work due to pain. I haven't lost sleep. I haven't cried. I haven't spent days in bed without doing the things I need to be doing or spending time with those I love. I can enjoy intimacy. I just don't hurt.

I lost so so so much. I'm so much more happy now, and of course I would be.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:05 PM on September 27, 2023 [15 favorites]

Sometimes the best way to finish a play about an unsolvable problem is simply to end it, and leave the problem unsolved in the play.

Sadly, I strongly suspect a total fizzle reality ending would mean my play does not get selected for the 10 minute play festival.

(Honestly, I can't write fiction and create worlds and characters, I don't seem to be able to write a play either...maybe it's all for the best to let it lie.)
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:05 PM on September 27, 2023

Currently I'm undergoing physical therapy because the rotator cuff tear in my shoulder "isn't bad enough", according to the doctor. He's also the one who told me it was age related (Oh, really? So that tearing I felt when the incident happened was just me, surging in age?)

I had a doctor skoff at me because I told him that 99 degrees WAS a fever for me, as my body temp is usually between 96.5 to 97.4. He stared at me and asked how I knew my "normal" temperature. Um, because it's been this way all my life and even my mother knew?

I finally got a new GP, and on my very first visit, the nurse practitioner in training looked into my left ear, where I have a constant issue, and oh so subtly asked "Do you ever clean your ears?" Way to make me feel like a gross slob. I was too shocked and ashamed to tell her that I've been complaining about constant sinus drip and that that particular ear feels full and sometimes sounds like there's water in it when there isn't, and that my previous doctor just told me to take allergy medicine, which I did, for a year, and it made no difference.

I avoid doctors until I'm in extreme pain, because I just don't trust them to listen, no matter how clear and consise I'm trying to be.
posted by annieb at 4:45 PM on September 30, 2023

My left ear has felt cloggy/alternating with not hearing so well for a few months now and I'm looking for any way to fix this on my own and NOT go to a damn doctor about it. I've actually gotten phobic about getting medical care since the pandemic started and I don't WANT to reach out for help and talk to a doctor and not be believed anyway.

That said, getting actual nasal spray up there today instead of trying to decongest my head seems to have made it feel better today? I hope that fixes it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:02 PM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]