Well, it’s not only the UK. I think it has to do with the fact that some health professionals don’t take women’s complaints as seriously as they take men’s.
A few years ago my husband called the paramedics when I was having trouble breathing. I was a week post surgery and the paramedics didn’t think it was worthy of investigation, thought it might be anxiety...why they came to that conclusion I’ll never know. My husband insisted I go to the hospital...diagnosis pneumonia in both lungs and a week long stay in the hospital on IV antibiotics.
I was ready to trust the paramedics and figure maybe it wasn’t that serious. So I think it might be a gender thing with certain health professionals figuring women are being...how did they put it, “drama queens.”
Just my 2 cents.
Heart disease in women often goes undiagnosed, as well. This is what happened to my mother. She had been complaining to her doctor of terrible heartburn for months. He gave her several prescriptions for the heartburn. Finally, she had a moderate heart attack and wound up in the ER. Turned out she was in need of a quadruple bypass and had advanced colon cancer and was severely anemic. She died a few days later. She was 67.
Illnesses present a little different in women and sometimes doctors put too much emphasis on women’s emotions in illness. I still find it incredible that someone can need a quadruple bypass and it went unnoticed. He must never have done any tests on her, or I am sure her severe anemia would have been revealed.
However, I will say that my mother found a doctor who told her what she wanted to hear: you’re just fine. I went with her to the doctor’s office once, right before her heart attack, and after he told her she was fine, I mentioned that she seemed very breathless lately. She got upset and as we left the office she told me she would never bring me to the doctor with her again. I doubt she had ever told him about her colon cancer symptoms, which she hid from everyone.
Ladies, make them test you thoroughly. It’s worth the embarrassment. My mother should have lived another twenty years with her children and grandchildren.
Maybe, but having been through the loops in the VA, I would say that it is quite reversed.
For what it's worth, I have a relative who uses the ambulance routinely. Chest pains, or a lack of chest pains. Chronic Constipation, chronic um, "non-constipation" ...etc etc etc. It's a social thing for her. That, and she can get away with it, and it's 100% bought and paid for already by my (our) FICA withholding.
Sickens me, but there's not a whole lot "the system" can do about it. I, and the rest of the family, have tried to shame her out of it, but she's determined to always find something wrong with her health.
It's abuses like this, that I'd like to see regulation work on. We don't need an overhaul of the system, just a little tweaking.
I think it must be drilled in their ignorant brains—everything is mental unless you see blood or bones. JERKS! It makes me sick to read stories like this and yours. Yet it keeps happening. We are still in the stone age!!!
“Well, it’s not only the UK. I think it has to do with the fact that some health professionals don’t take women’s complaints as seriously as they take men’s”
I totally agree with you! My grandmother died in 1946 for the same reason. She went to the doctor over and over and they always told her the same thing...female hysterics. Well she died and left six motherless children behind...two that were too young to really even remember her. My mother, at 16, spent the next 16 years of her life raising her siblings.
good job docs!
Doctors think women are all hypochondriacs and treat them that way.