Stop Undertreating Women’s Pain, You Absolute Goons
All of the physicians I see for my mystery illness appear to have the same specialty: Wasting my goddamn time. The most recent is, by training, a rheumatologist. I tell him that my body feels deeply bruised, as if someone creeps into my house every night and beats my arms and torso with a baseball bat while I sleep.
“You need to make goals,” he responds, gaze never leaving the computer screen in front of him.
“The problem,” I say, abandoning the ‘compliant, accommodating lady’ persona I try to inhabit when I am seeing a provider from whom I need something, “is not that I can’t make goals.”
He hovers his mouse over some lab values.
“Last week I peed my bed because my back locked up and I couldn’t make it to the bathroom. This pain is ruining my life. My last boyfriend broke up with me because I couldn’t have sex.”
“O-kay,” he concludes, making brief eye contact as he wraps up our appointment. He has recorded my complaints for the requisite four to six minutes, determined he has no treatment to offer, and will now punt me back to primary care and suggest I have more blood drawn.
“Could be Hep C,” he remarks before a nod goodbye. I leave the office with the usual rage I feel after doctor’s visits, abandoned by the system in which I…
