Menstrual cramps are often dismissed by doctors as a trifle. But this "not-so-bad" attitude toward female patients sometimes has fatal consequences.
It's such a corrosive, depressing experience: after a lot of back and forth, we get over ourselves to go to the doctor. Still, with doubts and uncertainty, we then sit in the waiting room and think about the best way to answer when he asks us what's wrong.
"I have such pain in my stomach that I just can't cope with my everyday life right now"? Yes, that hits the spot. So let's try that. But when we sit in the consulting room and describe our suffering, our doctor only asks: "Is it this bad every month for you? Or are you perhaps suffering from particular stress at the moment?"
"Women have children, too" - why doctors think we are resistant to pain.
Unfortunately, many women know something like this. Many have the experience that doctors do not take their menstrual complaints seriously. Pain is dismissed as psychosomatic or chalked up to "it's just part of being a woman. Although 90 percent of women suffer from at least one symptom of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), this phenomenon is apparently not of particular interest to scientists: there are five times as many studies on erectile dysfunction as on PMS.
Perhaps this is also related to a widespread prejudice among physicians: That women are naturally less sensitive when it comes to pain. After all, women also give birth to children and therefore have built-in, endogenous mechanisms to endure pain, many doctors believe. (You can read about this - the fact that physicians often believe it, NOT that it is so - for example, in a 2001 study in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics).
Really, ladies, what are we getting ourselves into?! We happily squeeze children out of our vaginas. So a few abdominal cramps once a month are probably still bearable without clamoring ...
Women wait 16 minutes longer for painkillers than men
In fact, this "menstrual cramps won't be that unbearable" mentality of doctors is spreading to other areas of illness. Before they administer painkillers to a woman in an emergency room, doctors wait for an average of 16 minutes longer than for a man. As a result, a woman is up to 25 percent less likely to receive opiates for pain relief than a man.
The gender of the attending physician doesn't matter, Jennifer Wider of the Society for Women's Health Research told Broadly. "Studies show that physicians, regardless of gender, tend to treat female patients worse and take more time administering medications."
I wonder if physicians are afraid of interfering with women's ability to reproduce by giving them medication. One doesn't know. It is conceivable, after all, that there is a tradition of paying more attention to the unborn child - even if it is still a purely hypothetical future dream - than to the woman ...
Misdiagnoses due to gender stereotypes - thank you, sexism!
The fact that sexist prejudices can even lead to complete misdiagnoses in many doctors' offices is shown by two - admittedly very special - cases also reported by Broadly: In one case, a woman suffered from pain in her jaw for years. Her dentist interpreted the pain as a symptom of an anxiety disorder but attempts to get rid of the discomfort through appropriate therapy failed. At some point, the woman's jaw was finally thoroughly examined and x-rayed - a piece of her wisdom tooth had lodged in her jaw.
In the second case, a woman sought help from different doctors for severe abdominal pain. Several medical professionals diagnosed heartburn and recommended dietary changes. "I was crying in pain and barely able to eat solid food," Broadly quotes the woman as saying. In the end, it turned out she had a tumor.
These extreme cases show the fatal consequences that discrimination against women in health care can have. But we shouldn't have to cite such extreme cases at all to justify discussing them. PMS is a serious condition and has nothing to do with stress, mental instability or mood. Women suffer from the symptoms of PMS. Medicine should pay as much attention to it as erectile dysfunction.
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