This week, I wanted to get a little personal, and in so doing, highlight a real issue that shows up as a symptom of the systemic misogyny plaguing our society, and how it permeates and creates barriers in nearly every aspect of women's lives, from personal to professional. This week, I wanted to share about my journey with infertility, and the accompanying emotional and physical pain surrounding it.
My journey and my experience are not unique, and yet they are still incredibly isolating. They are not novel only to me, and it's this lack of novelty that's truly troubling. I have made many a post on social media bemoaning the frustrations stemming from the treatment I've received by so-called medical "professionals", only to have those frustrations validated by so many other women and other femme-leaning and vulva-owning folx who shared their own experiences, incidents that echo my own, tales of doctors and nurses and medical staff who have written them off, treated them less than, and whose actions have cost many of them quality of life.
If you've moved through life up to this point, or even up to any time before this point, as someone who was socialized female, then this story will probably be a familiar one to you.
You go to the doctor, concerned for your health, whether in a small or large way. Something hurts, or doesn't feel right, or has changed within your body or mind, or you simply have an intuitive feeling that something is not as it should be. You share your symptoms, your concerns, and even some suggestions as to what you think might be the issue (as you've likely already consulted Dr. Google before this appointment). The doctor listens politely, nods along in acknowledgement, maybe touches you in some way or looks more closely at the affected area. They make a note, and if you're really lucky, you get a referral for testing or another specialist. By the end, you get a diagnosis of "probably nothing," a prescription for worrying less, and a bill for $100. You trust the doctor, or at least, you want to, because they've gone to medical school, they've trained in this, they're the alleged expert. But if they know so much, why don't you feel better?
I would bet my left boob that if you do or have identified as female and are reading this, you are nodding along with understanding, because you have been there. And don't get me wrong, those socialized and identifying as masculine go through this too, and probably in ways that are different (because you're a man, you should suck it up, and also, if you go to the doctor you're automatically a wuss, etc.). But generally, studies have shown time and time again that when a female presenting patient complains of pain as compared to her male presenting counterpart, she is taken less seriously, she is prescribed sedatives instead of pain medication (because really, she just needs to chill tf out, right?), she is misdiagnosed, and she is untreated.
I have been having periods for 18 years now. They started off painful (the first one literally had me in the bathroom all day because I thought I had a bad stomachache that wouldn't go away, when really it was my uterus contracting so badly that it was causing cell death), and got progressively worse as I've gotten older. In high school, I finally had to have my dad give me permission to have Advil stowed away at the nurse's office for me to take when my period started at school, but because school regulations disallowed for the administration of medication, even OTC medication, counter to the label, I was allowed to only have 2. This literally did nothing. The effect it had on my pain was akin to taking a Flintstones vitamin. And so I would continue to sit in the nurse's office, doubled over in pain, screaming and sobbing, until my dad could come pick me up, and I could take 4 to 6 more Advil when I got home and curl up with a heating pad. When I learned that Naproxen was better at treating muscle pain than Advil, I switched to that, but the dosage remained about the same.
The first time I brought it up to a doctor, they told me to take some Advil. I told them I already take pain medication, but that I'm still in pain. They told me they could put me on birth control or narcotics. Neither of those options felt right, and so I left without a solution.
Years later, I brought it up again, to a new doctor. I told her that I take 6-10 Naproxen and use a heating pad. She told me never to use a heating pad because my menstrual pain could be appendicitis and that heat would make it worse, and sent me on my way. Yes, this doctor effectively told me I'm too stupid to accurately ascertain the location and cause of my pain to be able to treat it on my own, and that I should just go on suffering "just in case."
I continued to bring it up to different doctors, and when my only symptom consistently came back as debilitating pain that caused me to miss school and interfered with my daily activities, but missed the boxes on irregular cycles and heavy flow, I was sent home with the same suggestions.
As of this post, my husband and I have been unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant for 21 months. At the beginning of this year we began working with a reproductive endocrinologist (RE) at a very well renowned local fertility clinic. They were quick to begin testing, and I was even very impressed that they took into account all of my fertility charting I'd been doing for 7 years, which ruled out issues with ovulation and timing (one of the first things they check). But during a followup visit, when I brought up my concerns about the possibility of endometriosis and its affect on our fertility, my RE said, "You probably don't have endometriosis, and if you did, it's probably not affecting your fertility."
I'll let you process that for a minute.
His diagnosis of "probably not endometriosis" was based on his super scientific method of listening to me for 5 minutes, and his assumption that even if I did have it, it wouldn't be having any affect on our ability to get pregnant was reached by the fact that he apparently picks and chooses which causes of infertility suit his bottom line best. (For the record, endometriosis causes infertility in roughly 30%-40% of otherwise healthy couples, and when treated can lead to a healthy, naturally conceived pregnancy; when left untreated, or is too severe as to be inoperable, IVF is often the only option to achieve pregnancy. We all know that doctors try to bill for "literally nothing was done", but when you're paying out of pocket it gets to be difficult to request payment for a service that literally was not rendered).
My overall satisfaction with our treatment at this clinic has since declined dramatically.
Most recently, I called my gynecologist in the throes of pain, because I thought if they could hear my anguish, they'd take me seriously. I had to leave a voicemail because no one answered. I sobbed into the phone, "I need to make an appointment, today if possible, for severe menstrual pain. This happens to me every month and I just need answers, please call me back."
I never got a call back.
Not even so much as a check in to make sure I was still alive and okay.
Call me old fashioned, but I would think that if I was a medical provider, and one of my patients left me a sobbing voicemail about severe pain, I'd at least call them back to make sure they got the medical attention they required. Right? Apparently this office does not operate under the same philosophy.
Last week, I finally called and made an appointment for hysteroscopic surgery to diagnose me with endometriosis. I learned many years ago that this surgery is the only way to diagnose it for sure, but it wasn't through a doctor that I learned this. I had to look it up. But not a single one of them referred me or suggested I have the surgery to diagnose endometriosis. As a matter of fact, not a single one -- not ONE -- of the many doctors and gynecologists I've seen over the years even bothered to show an interest in why I was having such severe pain. They were all extremely content to tell me I didn't know my body, to tell me to keep doing the things that weren't helping, and to get rid of me as quickly as possible. This is actually pretty common practice when it comes to "women's health." This is why the birth control pill is as over prescribed as it is. The pill (and other hormonal contraceptives) are great and wonderful and a great leap forward for women's sexual freedom, but its overuse to treat everything from acne to mental illness means that no one is taking the time to understand and combat the root causes of many afflictions that people with uteruses often deal with, meaning severe health problems are going undiagnosed, and people's lives are being negatively impacted in big ways, even by death.
So hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, I'll finally have a diagnosis and an answer, after suffering for 18 years.
So what's the point? Why tell you this long winded story about my period problems and infertility? I want you to take a look at the parts where the doctors dismissed me, told me I was interpreting things wrong, told me I was overreacting. They were essentially telling me not to listen to my body. They were telling me not to trust my body and my experience. They were telling me that everything I had gone through was invalid.
The medical field is not the only place these messages exist for women and those socialized as femme. These messages exist in the way diet culture and healthism teach us to ignore our cravings, ignore our bodies and their needs. Is it really a cupcake you're craving? Better question it, better doubt it, better eat something else that doesn't excite you, all for the sake of "health."
We see this in rape culture. When we question a victim and their motives and the messages they sent out to their abuser or attacker, we teach them to question their own experience. Did you really send a clear message that you weren't interested? Were you actually assaulted, or is this just regret? Better double check it, better think it over, because if you come to the wrong conclusion, or you press charges, you could be ruining some poor college student's chance for a fulfilling career.
It shows up in the commodification of femme bodies and female sexuality. It says to anyone in a female body or who is socialized femme that they're feelings don't matter, their experiences don't matter, their needs don't matter. Question everything you feel or experience -- whether it's cravings or severe pain. Settle for whatever someone else tells you will meet your needs, whether it works or not, whether it actually meets your needs or not -- whether those needs are physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual, whatever. Take what society says you deserve, because after all, you're only here to be pleasing to the eyes of the patriarchy. You need to be thin enough, white enough, able bodied enough, smooth skinned enough, young enough to hold any value, to be successful, to be taken seriously (but not too seriously, because after all, you're still a woman), whether you starve for it, spend tons of cash for it, experience physical pain for it, or nearly kill yourself for it. Your needs come secondary to the needs and pleasure of men.
When it comes to our relationships, when it comes to sex, when it comes to pleasure in all its vast manifestations, it's no wonder women have such a hard time. How can we possibly verbalize and ask for our needs to be met, to seek to meet them ourselves when possible, if we have lived our entire lives being told to question and deny those very needs? We are so disconnected from our bodies, that even if most of us were ready to take back our power, many of us don't even know how.
So today, this week, I challenge you. Take some time to practice listening to your body and its needs. Begin taking some baby steps to mindfulness within your body and its experiences. When you have quiet time or time alone -- when you go to sleep, when you're at the gym, when you're commuting to work, when you're walking the dog -- begin to take notice of the sensations of your body and what those sensations mean to you. Are you experiencing pleasure? Pain? Hunger? Exhaustion? Allow yourself to truly acknowledge it for what it is, rather than trying to explain it away as something else and trying to meet a need that doesn't exist simply for the sake of appeasing someone else, or society as a whole. You don't necessarily need to do anything about these sensations as you take notice of them, not yet anyway, and not unless you really want to. But practice getting in touch with them. The more you notice them, the more you'll be able to honor them, and by honoring the sensations and experiences of your body, you honor yourself, as a woman, as a human.
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