Ranging from discrimination based on gender and weight to class and race — it can seem as though we are speaking to a wall when trying to express our conditions. Doctors across the board seem to disregard anything related to menstrual cycles, calling various symptoms “normal.”
But what is normal about debilitating pain, projectile vomiting, and heavy, intense menses? By the time I received my diagnosis, I was already at severe stage 4 endometriosis, and the reality is: Had I been listened to much earlier, this would likely have been a very different outcome.
The refusal of adequate endometriosis care is what kept me in the same space — chasing answers, coming up empty, and being dismissed for years.
One of the things that stands out to me is the fact that whenever I would express distress or any emotion that didn’t fit the “strong Black woman” trope, even as a teenager, I would be looked at as if I had suddenly sprouted a second head.
The doctor would express some variation of the same sentiment: “Well, yes, there’s no cure, but it’s not cancer, and it won’t kill you.”
It isn’t that simple. I still felt sick every day, and every day is a challenge. The lack of serious intervention from healthcare professionals meant that my condition continued to deteriorate, and the symptoms I complained about were not attended to.
If I expressed difficulties with walking, lower back pain, or headaches, they would be dismissed as unrelated to my condition.
In 2021 my condition had started to take hold of me. I was in constant severe pain, I battled with fatigue, I struggled to walk without pain, my abdomen became so sensitive that I couldn’t wear pants or anything with a waistband.
I went to see a new specialist in the hope that I may get the necessary care and that my life would return to some semblance of normalcy. The specialist confirmed that my condition was quite advanced and severe. He was transparent and let me know the surgery may not be entirely life-changing because of the stage that the endometriosis had reached.
He let me know that it would likely be a very long surgery and that they estimated it would take around 5 hours. I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with medical equipment all over me, attached to me, and around me.
The nurse let me know that I had been in surgery for an entire 12 hours, and because of that, they needed to keep me in ICU to monitor my condition.
I was floored. In my entire medical experience, doctors had always shut me down and told me that while this was an incurable chronic disease, it wasn’t dangerous and it wouldn’t kill me. Yet I found myself exceptionally unwell and in ICU.
Source: Medical News Today
No comments:
Post a Comment