Still Don't Believe Women Are Treated Differently By Doctors?
Story time. Buckle up, buttercups, it's gonna be an anger-inducing ride if you're also someone who suffers from excrutiatingly painful chronic illnesses.
I have been very vocal and honest about my 2025 car accident and what it's done to my life, career, and body. What I haven't been as vocal about is the fact that my husband and I tried a social experiment with doctors over the time I've been fighting to be heard and taken seriously.
The Kind of Care I Receive From Doctors
A few months after my accident, I was still having immensely painful days that I could not make it through without relief. There was simply no way. I was miserable and completely intolerable, so I begrudgingly went to the ER, knowing what was likely to happen. When I got there, my husband helped me in by holding me up so I wasn't putting much weight on my feet until we got to a wheelchair.
The nurse came in and asked what was going on, and he had the doctor with him. I was shaking uncontrollably and bawling - I couldn't get much out in the way of words because it hurt so badly. He offered me 1 Norco after telling him I had already taken some, and it did nothing. I complied, and waited until they came back 15 to 20 minutes later asking how I felt. I said I felt no differently, so the nurse asked me what typically works. I hadn't been on narcotics in years before my accident, so I "it struggled to tell him, "It honestly depends - I don't really know what might work."
The nurse told that to the doctor, and he then offered me "something to calm down." I was perfectly calm, just painful. I didn't need a fucking anxiety medication, for god's sake. I knew, then, that I wasn't going to be receiving any care. The doctor refused to even come in the room, glued to his fucking Cowboys game so he could watch them lose for the umpteenth time - so important.
As my husband was trying to help me get out of bed and to the car, the doctor looked me straight in the face and ignored me when I said "thanks for nothing." My husband had to hold me back from walloping his ass as he walked past, because I was so angry. Just another misogynist who thinks women are hysterical and everything they experience is anxiety. I am so sick to death of it.
So, we decided to have my husband go to the ER for 1 disc herniation. ONE. Mind you, my spine is herniated at all levels, including every single cervical disc. I also have multitudes of other issues, and it was blatantly clear I was in pain. I rarely ever even cry when I hurt because I'm so used to it. I was bawling.
The Kind of Care My Husband Receives From Doctors
He walks into the ER with a fake limp, is in there for maybe 15 to 30 minutes, and walks out with a script for Hydrocodone, the very same opiate I struggle to even get prescribed by my pain doctor every month. Tell me how that makes sense. Tell me how any of that is fair treatment. It's not. And tell me why his story is one paragraph, and mine is 4 times the length.
It's very simple.
Women are not treated equally by doctors, and I'm sick of it. We have to start speaking out more, louder. We have to start letting people know, far and wide, how doctors are treating chronically ill women, especially. And BIPOC individuals experience even more discrimination than non-BIPOC people do. This has to stop.
Say it with me.
Pain control is suicide prevention.
Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate you being here. 💜
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