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.
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