Lili Reinhart on the state of womens’ healthcare
Posted by mlg1981
Lili Reinhart on the state of womens’ healthcare
Posted by mlg1981
33 Comments
Yup have had migraines and stomach aches for decades. The anxiety started after the doctors didn’t take my pain seriously which ruined my life plans.
I agree and it’s the same with them blaming women’s health issues on their periods. Can they please at least try to listen 🙏
Love her for speaking on this. I have MCAS as well but have never been diagnosed…I kinda just got burnt out with getting diagnosis after 3 of them (chronic illness like to travel together). But the biggest deterrent was telling my PCP my symptoms and her telling me it was all likely because I was a redhead. I was having chronic hives because of my hair color are you for real😭
Women get dismissed so often that many die from preventable deaths and many live in pain from dismissal. It’s important to women know to push back because the system is not friendly to us.
Anxiety, the artist formally known as hysteria. Tired of women’s health being treated with kid gloves and broad brush strokes.
I’m so over the patriarchy in every way. women shouldn’t have to beg to be believed by the medical community.
Having a female provider helps avoid this. I have found that family practice doctors are the most willing to look into issues and don’t blame it on anxiety/ weight.
And weight!! So many women are just asked to lose weight before doctors take their issues seriously!
I had a friend with Lyme disease get told by three different doctors she had depression (despite her telling them she did NOT have depression and even brought up that she had been working near ticks) before someone finally diagnosed her. It’s infuriating.
Reminder that ten years is the average and for some women it can take even longer. It took me 14 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis. That was 14 years of medical gaslighting, incorrect diagnoses, and 14 years living in pain because my lived experience was being dismissed.
The minute a doctor says I have anxiety, I leave. I let them know I have anger issues, not anxiety, and that stupidity is a main cause.
And then, because I do not have insurance, I leave without paying. I only pay for doctors who do their jobs adequately. I wouldn’t pay a restaurant if I ordered a salad and they brought me pork chops, so I am not paying a doctor for a blatant misdiagnosis.
Preach ma’am. It’s amazing how much less anxiety I have now that I found a provider who listens and sends me to specialists.
lili is so talented and i feel like every time i see a headline about her it’s for something positive she’s done/said to support other women regarding health, mental health, etc. it makes me really happy to see. if you guys haven’t watched her in forbidden fruits, she’s great.
It’s funny how my lifetime of anxiety was cured by 3 days on adhd and tachycardia meds.
It turned out I didn’t have anxiety, it was adhd and tachycardia.
I almost died because doctors thought I didn’t understand what stress was. She’s so right.
I genuinely thought this was Brittany Murphy at first …
Anxiety and perimenopause/menopause are always to blame. I actually lucked out because my PCP is a woman just slightly older than me and she never tries to pin everything on menopause.
Off topic, but I thought this is Brittany Murphy for a split second.
I was so nervous for years to bring up anxiety to my doctor because I didn’t want it on my chart. Eventually did and she took it seriously thankfully.
But of course. Any random ER doc or specialist had to bring it up when they saw it. I had been having a high heart rate and fever for 2 weeks straight after being diagnosed with PNEUMONIA and while in the middle of a flare-up of ulcerative colitis, which can cause anemia. All of that was on my chart and the doctor I saw when I went to the ER STILL sat down and said “so I see you have anxiety,” and tried to imply that was why my heart rate was so high. While I was recovering from pneumonia and dealing with an autoimmune disease ffs.
Anyway I got admitted for three days to receive fluids and high dose steroids when a more competent doctor came in.
Started having issues as a young teen and didn’t get diagnosed until my late twenties. I can confirm that many many doctors including women doctors treated me like I was overly sensitive and attention seeking.
I’d say I have more medical ptsd when I see my docs now because I always expect to not be taken seriously even though I’ve found a great and supportive team of doctors who do listen.
Just yesterday I was at my annual physical and was telling the DR that since I hit perimenopause my insomnia has changed in a way I’ve never experienced before. I even brought my husband to verify I’m sleeping 2 to 3 hours a night tops. I told her the medication I was on was leaving me incredibly tired the next day and not getting me anymore sleep (hydroxyzine 10mg) than just raw dogging it. She asked about my anxiety and I told her no worse or different than it has been for 40 years. She literally said “oh I don’t think so. I’m sure it’s because your mind is racing from the anxiety”and I said no, not really, it feels like there is almost a physical barrier between me and sleep. I then listed off the EXTENSIVE sleep hygiene steps I take every day and have taken every day for YEARS. She turned around and said we will increase the medication that’s not working and leaving me incredibly tired the next day from 10mg to 25 or 50mg. So we did. Guess how much fucking sleep I got last night?
I had an ER doctor act like I was wasting his time at 2 AM by coming in for breathing problems. He basically gave me a xanax and a paper on anxiety, then told me in an even pissier tone “We also found xyz secondary condition. I’m writing you a prescription for it, but I just KNOW you won’t go get it filled.” I had never met that man in my entire life, and there was nothing in my medical records that would indicate any of the shit he assumed about me. I didn’t get a proper diagnosis until I came back to the ER a year later for the same issue.
This, and “you just need to exercise more.”
My endometriosis diagnosis “only” took 6 years. One of the many female gyn that I saw diagnosed me as having gas.
I’ve had menopausal symptoms with my period basically as long as I’ve had a period. Finally psyched myself up to see a gyn about it and she said “dunno” and offered to yank all the plumbing. I took the birth control pills instead lmao
Something’s gotta give
No because I actually do have bad anxiety and it does negatively impact my health. Doctors shouldn’t default to it and that’s bad, but this would also negatively a lot of people instead of helping them and would be a massive overcorrection.
My diverticulitis was called stress and ibs by multiple doctors. I only got a diagnosis when I was hospitalized for it. They didn’t give a shit that I wasn’t even stressed.
I had misdiagnosed kidney stone for 6 months in my last year of law school. Dr ordered a cat scan but no contrast so it didn’t pick up the stone. Dr calls me and says you know it could just be stress. You’re in law school and that’s really stressful, maybe concentrate on relaxing some. It would be another 3 months before it was diagnosed. Pain every day, feeling like I had a uti, passing out from the pain, throwing up from the pain. All because a dr didn’t do his job and wrote me off as just a stressed out girl. My ureter was the size of a jumbo drinking straw by the time it was diagnose because the stone was stuck in it. The urologist kept saying you are so lucky you don’t go septic.
I’ve spent the last two years begging drs for HRT. Literally just started tonight because I have new dr. A woman who is young and actually cares about women’s health. Drs appts are so stressful as a woman.
doctors don’t know shit about womens chronic pelvic pain. the fact that they came up with the term “vulvodynia” to basically describe “pain that we do not know the cause of” is the cherry on top
I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in high school and guess what, I actually have adhd and not anxiety. And that was diagnosed at age 37 and being on the right meds has changed my life.
Meanwhile, doctors proceeded to not take my period pain seriously, then while on birth control to skip my periods they proceeded to ignore my excruciating pelvic pain that would wake me up at night and have me on the floor in the fetal position. Then they proceeded to ignore my pleas for a hysterectomy, until I found a doctor who ignored my chart and listened to me. This was after probably 5 different doctors and a few years.
And don’t even get me started on how hard it is to get estrogen patches. And this administration cares nothing about the shortage because perimenopausal and menopausal women are useless to them.
I mean, not really? Anxiety and the subsequent stress on your system does very negatively impact your health and in the long term, can kill you. Yes, medical misogyny chalks up too much to anxiety but it’s a genuine diagnosis.
The flipside to this is if you don’t accept that anxiety can be the issue, you’ll keep pushing for alternatives that may not help and actually cause harm. My mother underwent a lot of invasive and difficult interventions that she didn’t need to, as had the anxiety been accurately diagnosed earlier and the root cause been addressed, she could have been spared those tests and procedures.
What doctors should be doing is to rule out as much as they can first and then provide adequate medical interventions to address the anxiety, not just tell someone to think calm thoughts and send them on their way.
A grown man (he had a medical degree but I refuse to call him a doctor) in his sixties looked me and my mother dead in the eyes and told us we just didn’t understand the stress middle school girls go through. Immediately after telling me most ovarian cysts were the size of peas and lasted a couple of days to a week but mine was the size of a golf ball and had stuck around for three months. But that’s just stress.
I’d do 6th grade a thousand times to undo the scar damage that’s been done to my insides from ignoring that one.
I feel like for some reason doctors don’t understand that for the most part, we just want a diagnosis or some understanding as to why we’re expecting what we are. You’d think they had to pay personally for assessing for and diagnosing anything. Like why are you a doctor if you don’t want to doctor?
What should they be blaming it on?