LIVING BETTER
In a recent Medicheck survey of 900 women, 93 percent of respondents reported feeling dismissed when seeking medical care.
This sense of invalidation can be compounded in rural communities, where wait times are often long and specialists are few.
According to experts, when women describe their pain, they’re often met with cliché remarks like, “it’s just stress,” “lose weight,” or “it’s just PMS.”
These dismissive responses from medical professionals are dangerous, and they gesture to larger systemic issues of women being disbelieved and disrespected in medical and professional environments.
I know this experience firsthand.
For years, my concerns were dismissed, and I was told my pain was imaged – or that it was “just hormones.”
When I was finally diagnosed with endometriosis, my world changed.
I’ll never forget the moment I felt like my pain was being taken seriously. And that diagnosis meant everything to me.
It meant relief from holding my breath, waiting for answers. It meant validation – knowing that it wasn’t all in my head, as had been suggested. And it meant reckoning. It meant accepting that I could have had treatment much earlier if I had been listened to.
I wasn’t alone.
On average, endometriosis takes 6.5 years to diagnose, according to the American Medical Association. During that time, women endure fertility struggles, hormonal upset, emotional fatigue, and sometimes debilitating chronic pain.
Why Do Men Get Better Treatment?
But this isn’t just about one condition, this is about medical gaslighting.
It’s about women experiencing longer wait times in emergency rooms for the same pain as men. It’s about men receiving opioids for pain after surgery, while women are sent home with Tylenol, and told to lose weight.
In rural Texas, 28 percent of mothers live more than 30-miles from a hospital.
With so many challenges to receiving healthcare in West Texas, when we finally get to see a doctor, we can’t afford to be ignored — especially when we’re taking off work to be there.
Access to care should not be a luxury. It should be a guarantee.
Women’s pain must be taken seriously.
We deserve to be treated with dignity, and we deserve to be believed.
_______
Chrysanthemum Crenshaw Cohen covers a wide variety of topics for The Concho Observer, and has an extensive background working to improve social services and animal welfare.
She is a trained advocate who supports survivors of sexual violence, serves on local boards, and acts as a bridge between animal welfare and human social services.
