I joined you years ago. Good post - let's get a discussion going. I have ranted for years about this issue.
YOU had the symptoms and they suggested it was all in your MOTHER'S head?
Oy.
Again, too early in the morning to be this outraged. You people really need to save these ranty posts for later in the day when I'm already pissed off.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the stereotype that men don't go to doctors unless they're on the verge of death, so if they show up willingly it's assumed there's something serious going on?
What I'd really like to know, though - is it a problem with male doctors, or is it equally divided between the sexes?
This has some deep rooted start in the medical profession. After months of tests, switching docs and trips to ER. My brother's new cardiologist finally captured evidence of his arrhythmia. The Dr's first comment was, "Congratulations, you're not crazy".
One of my two best male friends in the world has fibromyalgia, and doctors continue to tell him it's all in his head, and refuse him any assistance or treatment. He continues to treat himself with herbal meds and 'alternative medicine', which is getting pretty expensive for him, since none of it is 'recognized' by anyone's drug plan as legitimate pharmaceutical expenses.
I've also worked (volunteered through my job) with the Multiple Sclerosis Society for many years, and the stories I've heard about how long patients who show signs of MS - yet are forced to wait (sometimes years) until doctors are 'sure' of their MS diagnoses - apply to both genders, not just women.
I have interstitial cystitis, another "female" disease (90 percent of sufferers are women). I didn't really have much trouble getting diagnosed, although the treatment at the time was limited, and I've had no trouble getting treated now that a treatment protocol exists. (Even better, the treatment to date has been successful.) I have been told that IC was also not recognized as a real disease for a long time. It's sort of easy to see why, as all it really does is cause pain (in this respect I've been less unlucky than some, as I understand a small minority of patients live in such pain that they almost can't move), and its physical symptoms closely mimic another disease that's easily cured by antibiotics.
I'm with you on the feminism.
I go to a female Dr and yet it still took months for her to address my pain. Usually when she walks in and asks, "How are you?" I answer with something banal. Last time I said, "In a lot of pain, and how are you?" Suddenly it was important to look for some causes. Now, do I blame myself for not being blunt earlier? Naturally.
Man oh man oh man. SEVENTEEN YEARS after a confirmed systemic lupus diagnosis, FOUR YEARS after coming within minutes of dying of Crohn's disease at Stanford Hospital, I had a neurologist tell me I had a little irritable bowel, nothing more, there was no lupus here, and he referred me to a psychiatrist. Honey, I could write a book--oh wait, I halfway have already, wanna see the manuscript?
My rheumatologist had gone, wow, you're the second case of brainstem lupus I've ever even heard of, and had sent me to that neurologist. Who had seen me very occasionally for ten years now, so, I mean, he knew what kind of person I was, cheerful and giving and upbeat. And then the guy came out with that!
It was so stunningly ridiculous that I burst out laughing. Yo. Dude. Let me teach you how to turn on a computer and access my records, okay?
Not to mention, I knew, and he did not, that the neurologist before him, whom I'd fired from my case and switched doctors, had pulled the same stupidity on me, and with that first one, I had gone to the shrink simply to defend myself. The shrink had shaken his head after an hour's interview, told me he was going to talk to Dr B!!!, and told me emphatically, "I see NO FURTHER ROLE for psychiatry in your case."
You can see why, ten years later, I laughed. I knew who this second guy would have to answer to besides me.
And no, I had utterly no intention of making that appointment. I was long away from needing to prove anything to anybody.
I'm right here, Lene. Been here for several years for several issues. Really thought I'd be done with this by now. I'll be womanning the barriacades for as long as it takes.
my mom sent me a link to your post... excellent article... and you're right... there is a ton of work yet to be done.
About 12 years ago I developed multiple food sensitivities, to the point where I was just eating rice, carrots and raisins. Despite the fact that I had a large lump in my neck, and could hardly swallow due to the reactions, my doctor told me he thought i was anorexic/ bulimic and needed to go to a shrink!
After a couple of visits to a fabulous naturopath we figured out I was allergic to dairy and most oils. Once I changed my diet I was back to my old self. Happily my doctor retired shortly after and I now have one that listens when there's a problem.
Ella, I have a daughter who has an igG-complex autoimmune response to dairy that started about four years ago. Her one little autoimmune disease, like celiac, only hers is triggered by so much as letting her food touch, say, a surface that cheese has been sliced on. It took a year to figure out why she was so ill all the time, and then, poof, well again.
And yeah, meantime, she'd been sent to a shrink.
Holy cow! What is it with doctors? For some reason they think they know what's "normal" for our bodies better than we, who have lived in them for years, do! I have a female doctor, and although I only see her once or twice a year (usually for a sinus infection), she always treats me like a hypochondriac. I've only been wrong about the infection once. And then last year when I went to her with a mysterious lump on my wrist the size of a marble, she told me it was a ganglian cyst and though it was bigger than she was used to, it would get smaller soon. It was only when I told her that was the smallest it had been that she dropped her dismissive attitude and actually felt it!
Been there at that barricade with you for years already.
Oh, I'm there with ya. Took me years to get my Lupus/Fibro diagosis and I only got it after I found a doctor who thought I wasn't crazy. I had just stopped going to docs for years and years because they always said I was stressed and depressed and could lose a little weight. And I was like...yeah, right. Been fat and depressed all my life, this is VERY different, thanks. So I had to get so sick that I was afraid I was going to die before I went to a doctor and I was sobbing in her office because I just knew she wasn't going to believe me. But she did and in under two months I had my diagnosis. Ha.
My mother then went back to the doctor I had been seeing and rather causally informed him that "Oh, by the way, you remember all those symptoms my daughter came in with and you dismissed? Yeah, well, she's been diagnosed with Lupus now. Putz."
I'm a guy and have had the same kind of problems. I know there can be differences in how genders are treated and diagnosed, but I also think it's the nature of the illnesses being diagnosed. As you said, some of these 'mystery' illnesses seem to affect women more than men. So is the problem in effectively diagnosing and treating them because the patients are mostly women, or is it simply that the diseases are harder to diagnose?
Some of the illesses you named didn't even officially exist until a few years ago.
oh, my dear,
it is so frustrating!!!
how long do people have to suffer...?
i am with you on the barricades.
you go, girl.
helga
love your blog!
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