Medical Gaslighting

Earlier this year, I woke up one morning in excruciating abdominal pain. Considering I wasn’t due to get my cycle for another two weeks, menstrual cramps seemed out of the question. All that I could try to do was shrug off the pain, take some ibuprofen, and go about my day. Come two days later – I was still in excruciating pain. The pain had migrated from solely my abdomen into my back and radiated throughout my legs. In a last ditch effort to relieve the pain, I left class to attempt to use the bathroom, hoping the cramping was just a result of a bowel movement.. only when I went to the bathroom I noticed an alarming amount of blood; blood that shouldn’t have been there because I wasn’t supposed to be menstruating. Now scared, I called my boyfriend and asked him to pick me up from campus and take me to the emergency room. At this point, the pain was so overwhelming that I couldn’t even walk back to my own car to drive myself.

Once we got to the emergency room, I explained to the nurses at the front desk that my pain was agonizing and had been going on for days. I also noted that I wasn’t due to start my cycle for another two weeks, making the blood a serious concern of mine. She honestly seemed to shrug me off and asked me repeatedly if I was just on my period or if I was pregnant.. to which I would always say NO! They then sent me to the waiting room where I sat for over an hour, hunched over in pain. When the results of my blood & urine tests came in, they were all normal.. and rather than making an attempt to further investigate my pain, the doctor shrugged it off as being menstrual cramps. Despite my repeated attempts to explain that they didn’t even feel like menstrual cramps, they discharged me.

I never found out what was wrong with me. As I suspected, I did end up getting my cycle on time later that month, so I won’t ever know what was going on with my body over those extremely painful couple of days. The doctors did not believe me. I wish I could say this is an isolated instance – maybe just a busy day in the emergency room and they had other patients that they needed to prioritize – but it isn’t.

Women and their pain are so frequently undermined in the doctor’s office, often being told their conditions are merely psychological or a result of their menstrual cycle. In the U.S., women in the ER wait an average of 65 minutes to receive an analgesic for abdominal pain whereas men only wait 49 minutes. Women’s pain being undermined even goes beyond emergency room visits. An IUD insertion is one of the most painful procedures that a woman can receive, and you must request a numbing agent during insertion, otherwise they do it without any painkilling agents at all. Whereas a vasectomy for men is nearly painless because they are administered not only a numbing agent, but also anesthesia in some cases.

The dismissal of women’s pain isn’t just a feminist issue – it’s a public health issue. Women deserve to be seen and heard without having to plead for medical attention. How many more stories of neglect need to be told before there’s change? Maybe we should be asking ourselves what role we’re playing in advocating for women’s health and how we can help solve this issue. So.. one question remains: what role will you be playing?