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This is the second part of a series of posts on mistakes I made while trying to be taken seriously by medical professionals, and how you can avoid them moving forward. I hope by sharing my observations and suggestions, more women will be able to avoid being gaslit, ignored, or misdiagnosed, and ultimately receive quality medical care.
After many hours doom-scrolling social media and seeing countless women relate their experiences during medical appointments, I've compiled a list of things that I did or said that didn't help me receive the care I deserved. At the time, it never occurred to me that I needed to act a certain way or avoid saying certain things. I mean really, why should we need to play this game just to be believed, truly heard, and given care without bias or gaslighting?
In a perfect world, we wouldn't have to consider the following, but the world isn't perfect and until it is we deserve the best medical care possible.
Your Word Choices Matter
More than once I've used a term or phrase when describing a symptom and the minute it slipped from my mouth I knew I'd screwed up. In my defense, I double-majored in biology and psychology back in the day and my vocabulary includes a lot of things that others might not consider common-use words. To me if feels completely appropriate to use certain medical terminology, to a doctor it looks like I've been "on the google" which is a short hop on over to their seemingly default diagnosis's of anxiety, obesity, or a mental illness.
The first time this happed was during a disaster of an appointment with my (then) Neurologist. I'd already broken my first rule (from the first series post) and then I went on to break this rule and a few more before it was all said and done. I was telling him about the ringing in my ears, and instead of adding on that it also felt like a heartbeat or "whooshing" I made the unfortunate decision to use the phrase Pulsatile Tinnitus. This doctor repeated what I'd just said with a smirk and I left the visit feeling so dejected.
Later via my online portal I discovered that he'd diagnosed me with "anxiety" when what I really had was POTS Syndrome, among a few other things. Even though I eventually got to the right diagnosis that visit summary is complete trash and is probably still influencing my medical care to this day. Not to mention this one appointment delayed proper treatment for almost a year and had me taking a medication for months that was not helping, and was in fact giving me additional symptoms.
Don't be like me. Use common descriptors for symptoms, even if you know what the proper term is. Don't give the medical professional the idea that you are trying to "play doctor" (even if someone needs to!) or that you've been doing a ton of online research, or hyper focusing.
Given that doctor often have overbooked schedules and see so many patients, they are likely subconsciously finding ways to save time where they can. Making assumptions about patients may be a mechanism of that, and you don't want them throwing you into the "dismiss and move on" category. If we can cut down the amount of flags we're throwing, maybe that will lead to better care going forward.
I hope that by sharing my mis-steps I can help other women avoid the gaslighting, misdiagnosis, or dismissive treatment that seems to be so rampant on our medical system now. And I'd love to hear from you if my suggestions have helped!
Much love,
Jane
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