Women's pain is often dismissed by doctors

[Genki Hikari]

36. Had a fricking ENDOCRINOLOGIST

Ignore me when I told him I, a post-menopausal woman, was having both severe menstrual-type pain and was hemorrhaging. I had a history of endometriosis and menorrhagia (severe bleeding during menstruation), but why would anything like the latter come back, post-menopause?

One time, I had a pool of blood gush out of me during a class, soaking through a chair and onto the floor below me. It was not only embarrassing but also downright scary. I passed out once after leaving a class. Scared the crap out of a bunch of kids and professors, but there were some pre-med types among them who knew what to do. Or so I heard later. I had no idea what was going on while I was passed out. I only remember waking up in an ambulance with my clothes drenched in blood.

The ER couldn't figure out what was wrong, but they did refer me to an excellent gynecologist at a woman-run clinic. They did a biopsy, and of course it was cancer. Uterine cancer, no less. My oncologist wanted to do a hysterectomy, but I was only stage one. That meant we could take some time to eliminate a risk factor like anemia before operating, rather than putting me through surgery when my red blood count was scary low.

I was lucky, I suppose, but I might have avoided a great deal of embarrassment and pain and misery if that sexist pig had listened to me. Any competent endocrinologist would know to be alert to anything that reeks of cancer of a reproductive organ, given how hormones tie into the reproductive system so much. Not that scumbag. I was just a dumb woman, so anything I had to say didn't matter.

The year all this happened was not 1970 or 1980. Nope. It was 2016.

And still, women are treated like we're exaggerating or lying or whining to be whining when we go to doctors about our health concerns.