I have been in some level of pain constantly for the last eleven years. My hands, feet, arms, legs, and back always ache. It can anywhere from discomfort to severe pain that leaves me bedbound. At its worst, even lightly brushing my skin can be agonising. When I first started going to my GP to find out why, I was told to ‘get used to it’ because ‘you're a teenage girl and teenage girls get growing pains, you're no different from anyone else’. With no other explanation offered, I accepted it.
But I didn't grow out of it and the pain continued to get worse. Over the following few years, I continued to go back to GPs and was given no diagnosis, advice, or support. It took dropping out of a degree and losing a job because of my pain at the age of 20 to finally be listened to, given tests and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a chronic pain and fatigue condition.
Getting an explanation for my suffering was not the end of dismissal from doctors. The GP who gave me the diagnosis told me to keep it to myself because a lack of understanding of the condition would mean ‘people will think it’s all in your head’.
Over the next few years, I kept wondering why I had to fight so hard for my pain to be taken seriously. I appealed for instances when other people felt like their pain had been ignored. Responses came exclusively from young women. For example, my friend at university was suffering with terrible back pain following a basketball injury some years before. She had constantly been ignored, misunderstood, and sent away with nothing more than a couple of paracetamol. When a doctor finally agreed to give her an X-ray, years after the first complaint of pain, it was discovered she had a broken disc in her back.
There was also the woman whose scoliosis was ignored between the ages of 18 and 24. And the woman who first visited a doctor when she was 22 and was sent away with a diagnosis of a water infection and irritable bowel syndrome, because ‘The doctors did not believe me when I said about my pain as I have a high pain threshold’. It turned out she had borderline ovarian tumours and serous ovarian carcinoma which, due to the misdiagnosis, developed until she was at the point where she needed a total hysterectomy at the age of 27. She said ‘[It] broke my heart knowing that it could have been stopped a long time ago. I did want more children but now I can't.’
There are countless instances of young women being sent away from a doctor’s office in pain, feeling embarrassed, alone, and ignored. Why? Is this because women today are still seen as not having full autonomy of their bodies, and that other people know best? Is there lack of education covering the conditions affecting young women in medical schools? Is it due to the fact that men are almost twice as likely as women to have not seen a doctor in the last year, leading doctors to assume women are hypochondriacs just because they are being seen more often?
Personally, I think all of these factors contribute. The only thing that has worked for me and the women I spoke to is persistence. If you know something is wrong and you are living in pain, please don't give up. Keep going back to your doctor until you are given the tests and treatment you need. If a young woman mentions to you that she is in pain, please believe her, because chances are there are already plenty of people who don't.
Sunday, 27 September 2015
Monday, 21 September 2015
Snoutrage as David Cameron’s unpignified initiation to elite dining society revealed
This story is the gift that keeps on giving. There's been everything from punny wordplay to new captions on old pictures of the PM holding pigs. And in the same week that it was announced that the UK has closed a deal with China on pig semen too. All Christmases have come at once for satirists.
Number ten are currently refusing to comment, understandably, and the reported photo of David Cameron caught in the act of putting ‘a private part of his anatomy’ inside the mouth of a dead pig has not been materialised, for which I imagine many people are hugely grateful. Who wants to see a dead-eyed, shiny chunk of ham putting his knob inside a dead pig?
Of course, due to the lack of evidence, there is currently no proof to support the claim. Making the rounds on social media this morning is the Hunter S. Thompson story of Lyndon Johnson telling his campaign manager to publicise that his opposition enjoyed regular relations with his pigs. His manager replied that no one would believe it and that it wasn't true, and Johnson said ‘Of course it’s not but let's make the bastard deny it’.
The two possible realities of this story are that David Cameron either did put his penis inside the mouth of a dead pig resting on his friend’s lap, or Lord Ashcroft and the press are wilfully releasing lies to discredit the prime minister. Neither of these options are favourable. We either live in a country ruled by a man who was already so wealthy and privileged that he was in one of the most elite establishments in the country and yet was still so desperate to join an even more exclusive, separatist society that he would willingly commit both beastiality and necrophilia at the same time; or a peer of the House of Lords (an unfair and undemocratic institution as it is) and the national press are willing to release untrue, scandalous claims in order to discredit the PM in a story that people are desperate to believe, simply because it is so outrageous. There is no going back from having to stand in front of a country you have been elected to lead, saying ‘I did not sexually assault a dead pig’.
The Daily Mail, the first newspaper to release the story, are historically supportive of the Conservative Party, and Lord Ashcroft who made the claims, has reportedly donated more than £5million to the Tories. Either I've watched too much of The Thick of It, or there is no way that either of these would have released such allegations unless it was favourable to another potential story being released to the press and was printed as a distraction. It’s not hard to believe from a government whose decisions and policies have already received horrendous stories in the press, such as the 2,380 people who have died after being declared fit for work after benefit system reforms. I dread to think what could be worse than pig fucking, so I hope Armando Iannucci has led me to an incorrect conclusion.
Whatever turns out to be the truth, all possibilities are so utterly beyond contempt that we should carry on taking the piss and having a laugh about it while we still can.
Number ten are currently refusing to comment, understandably, and the reported photo of David Cameron caught in the act of putting ‘a private part of his anatomy’ inside the mouth of a dead pig has not been materialised, for which I imagine many people are hugely grateful. Who wants to see a dead-eyed, shiny chunk of ham putting his knob inside a dead pig?
Of course, due to the lack of evidence, there is currently no proof to support the claim. Making the rounds on social media this morning is the Hunter S. Thompson story of Lyndon Johnson telling his campaign manager to publicise that his opposition enjoyed regular relations with his pigs. His manager replied that no one would believe it and that it wasn't true, and Johnson said ‘Of course it’s not but let's make the bastard deny it’.
The two possible realities of this story are that David Cameron either did put his penis inside the mouth of a dead pig resting on his friend’s lap, or Lord Ashcroft and the press are wilfully releasing lies to discredit the prime minister. Neither of these options are favourable. We either live in a country ruled by a man who was already so wealthy and privileged that he was in one of the most elite establishments in the country and yet was still so desperate to join an even more exclusive, separatist society that he would willingly commit both beastiality and necrophilia at the same time; or a peer of the House of Lords (an unfair and undemocratic institution as it is) and the national press are willing to release untrue, scandalous claims in order to discredit the PM in a story that people are desperate to believe, simply because it is so outrageous. There is no going back from having to stand in front of a country you have been elected to lead, saying ‘I did not sexually assault a dead pig’.
The Daily Mail, the first newspaper to release the story, are historically supportive of the Conservative Party, and Lord Ashcroft who made the claims, has reportedly donated more than £5million to the Tories. Either I've watched too much of The Thick of It, or there is no way that either of these would have released such allegations unless it was favourable to another potential story being released to the press and was printed as a distraction. It’s not hard to believe from a government whose decisions and policies have already received horrendous stories in the press, such as the 2,380 people who have died after being declared fit for work after benefit system reforms. I dread to think what could be worse than pig fucking, so I hope Armando Iannucci has led me to an incorrect conclusion.
Whatever turns out to be the truth, all possibilities are so utterly beyond contempt that we should carry on taking the piss and having a laugh about it while we still can.
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