The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))
What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?
Endemetriosis
Vaginal Thrush
Menorrhagia
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Fibroids
Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.
Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.
Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely
uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I
have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially
difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.
Chronic pain is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and women are less likely to be taken seriously or given treatment by medical professionals. I went through two years of diagnostics to finally find out I had occipital neuralgia; I felt doubted when I described my pain at every step of the way, but was lucky to have a partner who was persistent in helping me get treatment.
Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.
Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects.
This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!
Sources: Nature, Nature, Medscape, Biomedcentral.
Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.
Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?
Except that’s not right at all.
Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis – and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.
Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.
And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.
Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.
Then look up PCOS and diabetes.
Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed.
Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.
I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And that’s not even unusual – that’s the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.
NO KNOWN CAUSES OR CURES. JUST SUFFER. – the doctors diagnosing me with pcos, Fibromyalgia, and endometriosis.
I was diagnosed with endo when was in my early twenties. Their advice to me was hurry up and make babies because you could be made infertile.
Go on birth control
Or have a hysterectomy
Something else to know is endo spreads. So you can get misdiagnosed for everything but endo because of the location of your pain.
My endo spread to my navel, gallbladder, rectum, ovaries, and vagina. The gallbladder pain caused my side to burn. Went to the er for it 4 years ago and they told me it was acid reflux
When my navel started bleeding when I was at work last fall er docs told me if was an infection.
In both cases I said I have endo but the endometriosis causing these symptoms was ignored until I went to a specialist.
i’ve had endometriosis and pcos most likely since i was 15-16 years old. i was already infertile by the time i was finally diagnosed with both at 23. i’m 25 now and JUST started being treated for it. i went to doctors for years who didn’t take any of my symptoms seriously and tried to convince me over and over again that my symptoms were nothing to worry about, that it was totally normal to be having excruciatingly painful periods that prevented me from getting out of bed for days and that there was nothing that could be done. i’ve gone to the ER and have had doctors give me painkillers because my periods were so painful. before i knew i was infertile there was a time i thought i had a miscarriage and maybe just didn’t know i was pregnant or my appendix had ruptured because it was so bad. now i’m waiting for my doctor to figure out if i have fibromyalgia because there’s no actual test for it. these are only a few amongst a host of other health issues i have now, many of which developed from undiagnosed + untreated endometriosis and pcos. it took me over 10 years to find a doctor who is listening to me and taking all of my concerns seriously.
I have fibrocysitc breast disease which is extremely painful, a week out of each month, no cure, “common”. Nothing they can do about it.
Other female-identified issues that doctors ignore:
—Subchorinoic hematomas in pregnancy. I almost LOST MY SON because of these… And my male OB staff didn’t even bother to TELL ME about it, the ULTRASOUND TECH had to do it! “Oh it resolved itself” is what I was told when I asked the doctor I saw that day.
—PMS and PMDD
—Breast-related spinal degradation; there’s probably not a medical term for it but this is when the breasts are so heavy they literally pull down part of your spine, causing consistent subluxation, muscle and nerve strain, and neck issues. I need a reduction for this reason but doctors won’t take me seriously.
—Orthopedic damage postpartum. It’s been 14 months since I had my son and my hips are STILL really loose and almost detached.
Hey reblogging because I spent the worst year of my life trying to get medical treatment, being dismissed by every doctor I visited, and having to do most of the research myself to even be taken seriously by a specialist. Listen to women.
Doctors have said that I have PCOS and basically a couple years ago I had to be taken to charlottesville since I had heavy bleeding that resulted me to be somewhat anemic, took a palyp out of my ovary and place a IUD to prevent any further problems, I think I should check out more about this just in case
FUN FACT! I nearly died from the above!
I self diagnosed after ten+ years of utter living hell because an older woman friend mentioned “endometriosis,” I looked it up and found a list like this. Armed with that information, I sought out a COMPETENT gynecologist (not an ob/gyn – some are competent but a lot are too distracted, I’d seen so many before) who basically FLIPPED OUT and immediately rushed me into surgery immediately. They weren’t exactly sure why I was was not already dead because my entire insides had basically stitched together!
I’m still fighting “female condition” fallout (please ALSO look up “POTS” and “mast cell” if you’re one of so many women with the chronic fatigue/ME/fibro constellation.) Some of the super competent, skilled, cutting edge researchers I’ve visited for that suggest the above endocrine disorders are likely another branch of an overall problem that’s being systemically ignored… because, you know, ladies are so hysterical. Add to that racial bias in healthcare (and the fact a lot of patients with these issues may be extra likely to be fat) and yep, here’s a whole legion of patients completely ignored and basically left to die. Fun fun!
Do research, advocate for yourself, and don’t doubt what you feel. It’s real.
Nowhere near ‘serious’ for me, but I remember how much my period ‘cramps’ hurt for most of my life and how I’d try everything written about how to relieve cramps yourself and how none of it worked and then I had an emergency caesarean (I’d planned a home birth with a midwife and some doulas) and the surgeon casually mentioned I had a ‘bit’ of endometriosis and…oh. So. I’d probably never had menstrual cramps. (And I only knew what endo was because of knowing @mmymoon) (And later reading found some studies that suggest that pregnancy with endo may lead to complications…like needing a caesarean…)
So even if it’s not debilitating, not-knowing what’s really wrong can lead to years of taking the wrong approach to try to alleviate things. (Will also mention I had a bladder infection once that went diagnosed for a few days because I thought it was regular PMS pain, heh.)
God help you if you get sick as a teenage girl.
You might as well have a lazy moody timewaster written on your forehead because that’s what most doctors and specialists will see from your charts even when the answer is right there in the symptoms.
Wait….bad cramps arent normal past puberty? Wth why have I never heard this? I thought feeling like my insides are being carved out each month is normal…. is heavy bleeding even normal then? Wow…
In my understanding, if it’s endo, what you’d be feeling isn’t actually cramps, but instead it’s your insides sticking together, so people can absolutely technically say “bad cramps don’t last beyond puberty” and be right while also neglecting to mention all the other things that might be causing pain during periods…
(Emphasis on the ‘in my understanding part’–I’m nowhere near learnèd on this.)
Since we’re talking about incurable female disorders – let’s talk about how if you go for too long without treating PCOS, it can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and endometrial cancer, as well as polyps in your uterus. It’s nothing to fuck around with but the first gyno I went to literally said, and I quote, about the fact that I wasn’t having my period at all for several years, “if it’s not bothering you it’s not bothering me.” That’s… not how that conversation should go. At all. I literally said, “hey, I haven’t had my period in years” and basically had a doctor shrug and go, “oh well, guess that’s ok, carry on.” It took several more years and a new, competent ob/gyn to have the conversation I should have been having when I was 18, and all because I was too scared to stand up for myself, being, you know, a teenager and vastly uncomfortable with the whole “get naked and then sit there after the exam still wearing only a dressing gown that barely merits the name to talk to the doctor” process.
What I’m saying is that it shouldn’t probably have taken a cancer scare to get competent healthcare.
Meg's Mumbles 