For women the bullshit goes beyond the usual our medical system is fucked level of bullshit.
Doctors have an admitted bias against women in terms of trusting patient reported information. The stigma of "hysteria" still lingers. If a woman claims a 7 pain level most doctors will treat at 3-4 pain level. Women will self report important ailments that need further testing only to be told she over reacting or attention seeking. What should evoke concern and a handful of referrals for further diagnostic testing get brushed away.
So true and well said. I remember when my mom told me about her struggles to get doctors to take her seriously, i was a teenager at the time. This isnt a story about reproductive issues but its still illustrative. These fucken doctors jerked my mom around
for over a decade while her spinal injury was getting worse and almost completely debilitating.
Eventually, after many years, she found a doc who finally ordered scans and they found that literally bone spurs were growing out into the soft tissue at the site of the original injury (fractured vertebrae! between the shoulders) and that half the vertebrae had disintegrated away and didnt exist anymore, from an injury that had healed badly decades earlier.
The same doctor who had ordered the scans then performed the surgery to clean up the bone spurs and installed three titanium rods and several screws into her back to hold it together. As an aside, the same week my mom had her spinal operation, my little brother (from a different momma) was 9months old and had open heart surgery, it all happened right at halloween that year.
Continuing on, it worked out well! Her quality of life improved greatly after she healed, and no longer had to wear a chest brace to stay upright and most importantly, the chronic pain from the injury was way lessened.
Even though i cant remember the doc’s name, I remain very thankful that doctor came into the picture, without him, my mom would probably be dead by now! Not all of the docs out there are jerks, just some of them.
But it really illustrates how some people dont take women seriously because of the legacy of perceived hysteria.
I also read that women who suffer from heart disease and heart attacks have a higher rate of mortality because the checks aren't done as consistently as with men in this area, and so they didnt know they were at significant risk of heart attack.