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 🙂
or being told not being able to walk up a flight of stairs without fainting/not being able to stay awake for more than 5 hours was ‘anxiety’ until finally the 5th doctor you saw diagnosed ur CFS/ME
It’s not getting proper treatment for over a decade because people think another female only disease isn’t real. And your insurance still does not cover your prescription even though it’s the only one you can take.
Dismissing symptoms for three years before finally sending you to a specialist and suddenly everything is happening very very fast because it is so obviously cancer.
Being constantly hounded to “just lose 5 or 10 pounds” when you came in for a fucking bronchial infection. Being talked over when you try to emphasize the fact that, not only did you not come in to talk about your weight, you are also recovering from an eating disorder.
The amount of eye rolls and shitty recommendations I got from doctors when trying to find the cause of my sexual pain was astounding.
It’s almost going blind after a years worth of appointments that culminated in the doctor telling me to “come back when you have a real problem” and finally getting referred to a specialist that found that I had spinal fluid pooling in my brain and pressing on my optic nerve causing me to slowly go blind.
Going to the emergency room over and over again, because of severe abdominal pain, vomiting after meals, and weight lose. Having a doctor not talk to you, but your father instead. Then being put on anti-psychotics (the doctor said they were anti-anxiety), after the doctor tells your father that you’re faking it for attention. Going back to the emergency room a year later in so much pain you’re delirious, only to be left there for hours, because they still think you could be faking it. Only to find out that you have gallbladder pancreatitis and it’s gotten so bad that emergency surgery is the only option and you almost die because NO ONE took you seriously because not only were you female but your were a teenager.
There are actually research articles and opinion pieces on this. My two favorites include “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously” and “The Girl Who Cried Pain”