AIBU to ask what you’ve had to do to get a doctor to take your pain or symptoms seriously?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

In January we’re launching a new Mumsnet campaign to highlight and tackle medical misogyny - the all-too-common experience of women having their health concerns dismissed, minimised or ignored by healthcare professionals, often with serious consequences.

As part of the campaign, we want to shine a light on the extraordinary lengths women often have to go to before they’re actually listened to. So we’d love to hear from you:

What have you had to do to get a doctor (or other HCP) to take your pain or symptoms seriously?

If you’ve got a story you’re willing to share, please do post below and help us to show the scale of the problem and why change is so urgently needed.

Thanks,
MNHQ

I told them about my pain. Have always been taken seriously by doctors.

The midwife didn't take me seriously though (was 6-7 cm dilated).

Had to pay to go private. 8 appointments with my NHS GP over the space of 12 weeks with them repeatedly telling me the symptoms were in my head.
Paid for a private gynaecologist and was diagnosed and treated.

What infuriates me the most is the first doctor wrote on my notes that I was very anxious about the condition- and so after that, they just wouldn’t listen to a word I said.
The other infuriating thing is 7 of those appointments could have been used for someone else 🙄🙄

My son was vomiting daily for seven (7!) weeks and took him to the GP so many times, often with me in tears. GP said I was the ill person in the room. Said I needed mental health support. Said my son just has IBS. In the end he was admitted to hospital with bowel obstruction. Now I always get my husband to take our kids to the GP.
Note that I myself am a doctor and yet still bloody ignored and thought of as hysterical.

Watching with interest as I have had a couple of occasions when I have not been taken seriously by the medical profession. Once when I had fractured my ankle and was told I wouldn't be able to walk on it if it was broken,which turned out to be nonsense. On another occasion I had an incarcerated umbilical hernia. Despite having been in severe pain for 12 hours and vomiting repeatedly,I was told I had constipation. It was only when I fainted from the pain in A and E that I was taken seriously, and given a CT scan. Good thing I was as I was told after the operation to repair it that another 12 hours would have probably meant that some of my intestine would have died,meaning a much more complex operation would have been required. Another 24 hours could have been fatal.

I started having symptoms of perimenopause when I was about 40, including irregular periods/bleeding and flooding. I had my last periods when I was 58! I saw I don't know how many GPs who all assured me that my symptoms were perfectly normal, including bleeding almost every day for a year and ending up very anaemic. I was referred to a haematologist about the anaemia. He said all my symptoms were caused by 'work-based stress' and refused to treat me.

I now have a heart condition that is not uncommon in older women. It has the potential to cause heart attack or cardiac arrest. My GP surgery ignores it and declines to monitor me, because it is allegedly "the wrong kind of heart disease". As my symptoms have not changed, they will not even refer me back to Cardiology.

The last time I had a cardiac episode, it was worse than usual, did not respond to medication, coukd well have been a heart attack. so we called 999. There were no ambulances available at all in our area, but I bet someone would have turned out for a man in the same situation. Since then I have been trying to get monitored, but haven't managed it yet.

Medical misogyny is alive and well and not going anywhere any time soon.

I started symptoms of menopause in my late 30s. GP didn't think it was possible. Eventually had a blood test which confirmed it, and I was done and dusted by 45.

I went with hair loss around my face and general thinning. Same GP said it was my age. After my hairdresser commented, a couple of years later, I had a referral and have lichen planus. If my GP had reacted initially I would have rather more hair.

I would add that female GPs are no better, often worse, as they presume they know how another woman is feeling.

I had to almost die.

I went to A&E twice with incredible pain. Twice they sent me away dismissing it as period pain, even though I knew it wasn’t.

My friend dragged me back for a third time and it was during that visit that my ectopic pregnancy ruptured. I had to have emergency surgery, and lost a fallopian tube and ovary, all because the doctor wouldn’t take my pain seriously.

Just to add, and I wonder if any other doctors here will recall the same, but at medical school whenever a question started off as “24 year old female patient…” you could bet your arse the answer would be either obstetrics/gynae or mental health. ALWAYS. This was at my London uni but also on National questionbase PASSTEST in 2011-2016.

Took my wheezing, feverish 1 year old to A&E. Told them he could never keep down Calpol or any other oral liquid medicine, it ALWAYS made him projectile vomit immediately. He needed paracetamol to bring the fever down. They absolutely refused to believe me that it would make him sick, and insisted on giving him Calpol style paracetamol as a liquid. He immediately projectile vomited over the nurse who administered it. She had to go and get changed. I did tell them, but who believes a young mum?

• Develop spesis and I was nolonger producing urine because my kidneys weren’t working. Before that I was told my c section wound wasn’t infected because they couldn’t feel the heat around the area.
• Turn yellow because a gall stone was stuck in bile duct so my liver wasn’t working. Before that I was told by my GP the gall stone attacks were panic attacks and treated as if I was seeking drugs.

Gallstone sufferer here.

I had to use heat pads that were far too hot to be safe, morning noon and night for months and months. The heat pads were so detrimental to the state of my skin that it caused deep purple mottling and ulcers. It was only then that a doctor finally believed my pain really was a 10 out of 10 and I got referred for gallbladder removal. He gave me a lecture about not overheating my pads and giving my skin a break after the op! I can't believe it took that long for any of them to take me seriously.

I had to take my husband into the consultation with me. That's not true, he chose to come in with me, because I couldn't walk unaided and it looked good that he was 'helping' (walking beside) me, and demanded that "Something needs to be done".

It worked on that occasion but beware the man who goes to every appointment with his very damaged wife.

I have had to use stubborness and educate myself on the right vocabulary to use. Part of my family is medical and I use specific vocabulary and I'm very articulate and precise.

I had to use very specific terms to get a nurse to see me and prescribe me antibiotics for a tremendously painful yeast infection - but it worked.

I had to go private for a lipedema diagnosis as I was ignored by the (female) GP. She said "it's not liquid retention", and when I asked what it could be, she just shrugged.

Once I had a horrible chest infection and the GP said it was just a cold and to take paracetamol. I told him I was a team cyclist and I was unable to go up the small steps leading onto his office, that I knew my body and it was not a cold. That if he discharged me I wanted my symptoms detailed in his notes and that he had refused auscultation.

He checked me out. I needed several courses of antibiotics and weeks to fully recover.

I also had to put my foot down and very heavily advocate for myself when giving birth.

Similar here. Was diagnosed with globus in triage at a&e just before my troponin levels came back in the 8000s and I was sent to a bigger hospital with a CCU.

slightly overweight or any history of depression and you’re written off.

I have had multiple miscarriages.

Due to unmanageable pain and torrential bleeding, I have had to go to A&E to be managed.
Even before 12 weeks gestation, I labour.
It can last between 6-12 hours.
Codeine does not touch this pain. It is intense, I can’t speak, I can’t move, I can’t breath.

“it’s just like a heavy period “ has been told to me on numerous occasions.

I need gas & air and morphine. As soon as I have “passed” the pregnancy, like a switch, the pain stops instantly. I can then try to contain the bleeding and go home. Don’t need an overnight bed, don’t need any further medications.

In A&E on one occasion, a young Dr came and sat by me, put his hand over mine, tilted his head to one side and asked me “could this pain be more psychological than physical do you think?”.
I was chugging the gas & air, couldn’t speak because the breakthrough pain was so horrific, felt like a drug seeking addict.

For context, I don’t do sick or unwell, I’ve no time or patience for it. I’ve had a miscarriage on the Saturday then gone back to work on the Tuesday so by no stretch of the imagination am I soft or delicate. But truly, the pain is utterly utterly horrific while I am actively miscarrying.

I was pushing my baby’s pram through the snow 10 days after a C section.

Never have I felt so misunderstood, patronised and angry as I did that night.
Nothing I could do but try to get through it but I have never forgotten it.

In my mum’s case, she had to fall down a flight of stairs and sustain a serious head injury for her GP to admit that perhaps her shuffling walk was a sign of Parkinson’s disease and refer her for testing. She also had to collapse in the street and be blue lighted to hospital to finally get to see a cardiologist and be diagnosed with a severe heart valve defect. Same GP both times and was fobbed off with stress and anxiety for years.

I think perhaps the meaning of GP has changed from General Practitioner to Generally Pointless.

You do wonder about an education system that lets a resident doctor think it is all right to call a patient and shout at her for not being in clinic when she is waiting for the blood tests that he has sent her for.

He went on to realise that he had misdiagnosed me, but failed to do anything about my three reports that his treatment was not working and I was still in pain. Then he phoned me the day before my long awaited appointment (six weeks instead of the two weeks it should have been) and tried to intimidate me into moving it back so he didn't have to confess to his Head of Department. He got disciplined and the Trust paid me damages after that.

Would he have treated a male patient like that? Somehow I doubt it.

On examination, a GP told me the cause of my pain 'definitely wasn't my kidney'. Later in hospital, a CT scan revealed the kidney was the size of a rugby ball and full of pus. Thanks, Doc.

My wife had to become terminally unwell before she was taken seriously.

Approximately half a dozen visits over the course of 8 months to our (male) GP with increasingly severe pain, only to be told repeatedly that it was a side effect of some medication she was taking for another condition. In desperation one night we went to A&E, where a simple blood test showed that something was very wrong, she then had a scan which clearly showed the pancreatic cancer that was by then too far advanced to be operable.

I agree with this and the other posters who say that female doctors are just as bad. Weirdly, they seem far more dismissive of any gynae related thing than men, when you'd expect them to be more understanding...

But I’m just ‘a bit of an anxious person’ and ‘that’s just the way god made me’ so there’s nothing to take seriously…

They are all taught in the same system as the men.

I am a doctor and remember being taught at medical school that women go to the GP all the time, but if a man turns up then it's definitely something serious.

Now there is some truth in this as men often leave things until it's terrible, but it doesn't mean the women weren't turning up for something important. Women will naturally go to the GP more and younger for gynae issues, pregnancy and then illnesses in young children.

When I worked with resident doctors it would be common to have at least one new young female doctor on each rotation fainting, collapsing with period pain or flooding and being desperately apologetic and trying to power on through. We had to sit them down and tell them this was not a normal part of being a woman, no period pain isn't supposed to leave you anaemic and doubled over and could they please go and get some medical help. Often we also had to tell them what specific help they needed to ask for as well.

Women's health just isn't taught well. I got help of one of my conditions (predominantly affects women) after finding out the diagnosis on Mumsnet and paying to see someone privately. By this time I'd had it for 20 yrs and I am a bloody doctor! It also took me over 10 years to have my migraine treated effectively - again a condition that predominantly affects women. By this time I was in trouble at work (the NHS!) for having so much time off sick.

Thank you so much for doing this Mumsnet. Its well needed!

I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease a few years ago. It took nearly a year to get diagnosed and was told by the doctor that it was anxiety and was put on lexapro. They reassured me I was fine and that it was in my head basically. Over the months I kept on losing weight with a decent amount of blood in my stool. I went to the doctor every 2 weeks or so with my symptoms. I ended up going to a&e myself when I was very weak and 6 and a half stone. At the hospital, I was told it was food poisoning and was sent home. On the way out, a nurse pulled me aside and advised me to go back to a&e a second time, that if I do they have to investigate (thank you if you are reading this!). I did that and after 15 hours waiting on a trolley, they investigated and I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. I spent a month in hospital. If the doctor and hospital had listened to me, I would be healthier today

I loathe to type this cause it’s such a common story. Midwife told my parent I needed to calm down and stop being hysterical (behind the sound prof curtain) because I was barely in labour. 10 mins later he was here. That’s not the unusual part. Ds had a bilateral haematoma and the paediatrician reading the notes was furious that I hadn’t had a section. Apparently from my notes it was clear I needed one and it was dumb luck we were both ok. She was really serious and questioned what happened at every stage. I had no idea, I just assumed I laboured fast.