I've had some pretty bad experiences with doctors, but this one tops almost all of them.
I have endometriosis, or at least, I think I do, apparently having had years of long, painful periods heavy enough to cause an iron deficiency that confined me to my bed, dizzy and possibly throwing up ISN'T an indication that anything is necessarily wrong. And, in another not awesome experience with a doctor, I went in to my first gynocologist a year ago because through the birth control pill I'd been taking to control my symptoms, I had been bleeding nonstop for 3 months. She gave me the Depo shot, which subsequently ruined my life and body for almost a year. This appointment with Dr. Warner was to figure out what is going on with my body now that I'm finally off it, and to see what the next step could be in terms of treatment, since my most recent period, although not as painful as usual, lasted for 20 days.
That's not the guidance I got, though.
Dr. Warner wanted to put me on another birth control, which I understand, because there isn't much you can do without messing with hormones. However, since my body is still clearly reeling from Depo, I had resolved not to start messing with it again just yet. After I said that, the appointment was essentially over, because clearly she didn't care to talk to me about all of this at all. I explained that depo had made me gain 20 pounds, and I really explained it in sort of a cursory way as a reason not to go back on hormones yet and let my body recalibrate. However, she cut in and explained to me in a very patronizing way that in fact the Depo was not what made me gain weight. You know, this woman who I'd known for literally ten minutes. Since her medical degree made her so godlike, she knew without asking (or listening) not only what was going on in my body and what it felt like, but what I'd done with said body for the past two years. And how good or bad my self control was. That's right, she told me that it was basically completely my fault that I'd gained this weight. Now I'd been 96 pounds for 5 years at that point. I gained 20 on Depo. I've lost 5 since coming off. No diet change. (Take my word for it, although she didn't.) I sat there in humiliated disbelief as she explained to me, as if I were a particularly stupid child that she deeply pitied, that "it's really about controlling your diet" and "medications have no calories, the only thing that makes you gain weight are calories." (Really? Calories make you gain weight?? Congratulations, looks like we both took high school bio.) She went on to actually SAY to me (I am currently 115 lbs and was 96 before. I'm not even overweight and I am livid about the fatshaming about to go down here) that PEOPLE GAIN WEIGHT OVER TIME AND WHEN THEY TAKE MEDICATIONS THEY JUST USE THEM AS AN EXCUSE FOR THAT.
Yup, she all but told me that I had gained this weight on my own. Oh wait. She LITERALLY told me that I had gained this weight on my own. She said those words.
Now I was pissed. This wasn't what I had come to talk about, but was I going to let a woman I didn't know criticize my self control? No, I was not. And so I said, somehow feeling I needed to prove I led a "healthy" life, I was just in a rigorous conservatory program for 4 years and during that time when I gained 20 pounds I barely had time to eat more than a bagel, an apple, and some yogurt every day, whilst hauling myself up a piece of silk by my arms 3 days a week. I didn't change my diet or exercise.
She proceeded to tell me that I couldn't know whether I'd made a change in my diet unless I'd written it down.
I had no idea that I needed a notary present at every meal, but from now on, Dr. Warner, perhaps I should pay one to follow me around so people like you will have proof that I'm not a lazy pig who eats her weight in donuts every day and lies to you about it to try and demonize a drug I'd have no reason to go after other than if it ruined my health. And honestly even if I was overweight or did have unhealthy eating and exercise habits, that wouldn't make me a bad or stupid person, and you still certainly wouldn't be allowed to talk to me like that. I, a willowy 22 year old, sat there feeling humiliated and guilty about my body. If I had been less sure of my body image, HOW might that have affected me? Even I cried on the way home, and I know I'm not overweight and that being overweight would not be something to be ashamed of if I was. I can't imagine what kind of damage that moment could have done to someone who society already deems less worthy because of weight, to be shamed like that by a doctor and to have their knowledge about their own body and lifestyle dismissed like that.
From then on, I pretty much knew this was gonna be a rough visit. We hadn't even gotten to the topic and she'd already pissed me off, shamed me, humiliated me, and made me basically want to cry. And we certainly hadn't gotten to the exam, which by then I knew would be a moot point because you have to actually trust someone for such things to work out, and she was at this point actively attacking me.
So I proceeded to try and tell her about my endometriosis.
This apparently was also a problem, as she had already decided I didn't have it. She also had decided, even though I'd been to an obgyn who told me my symptoms fit it and gave me meds to treat it, that I had self diagnosed on the internet, which apparently earned me the utmost disdain. She listened patronizingly as I tried to explain that although birth control had helped, my periods still were not regular or normal, and that since I'd only had one period in my life pain free, I was pretty sure that once my body recovered from Depo that the pain and nausea would return.
She then asked me, in a voice dripping with the utmost pitying condescension, "Well. Have you been having... Pain? Because... If you're not in pain... Then... You don't have endometriosis."
Uhm. What? Forget the last 22 years of my life when I did have pain, and the fact that endo is not curable, you're right, it's f-ing gone.
I tried to politely convey this.
She continued for about 10 minutes to describe the symptoms of endometriosis in a sickeningly patronizing way and conclude without any input from me about what was actually going on in my body that I'd didn't have it.
I wanted to cry the entire time. I wanted to ask her why I was even in the room if she was going to discredit everything I said about my body, and not believe me when I told her how I'd behaved about things I could control.
I tried to explain to her that I HAD pain, just not this one last time, and that no pain was the fluke, not the other way around. She made a real show of trying very hard to get me to explain when I'd last had pain, except at this point, I was pretty sure there was a level of pain she'd think was valid and that anything below it wouldn't be and I'd be condescendingly shamed for mentioning it. So I asked what level of pain she meant.
I should have seen it coming that her response would be a really big, fake confused, worse than I've been treated since I was 7 (and even then only by adults who were total jerks), "So... You can't even tell me when you last had pain. You're not even sure what you felt."
I should have walked out. I wish I had. I'd have cried, though, and that was the one way in which she hadn't humiliated me yet.
So instead, I shut up, and I let her do the exam. Which, not shockingly, she couldn't really do, because if I could have put a reinforced steel door between her and my vagina at that point, I would have.
I cannot believe any doctor would treat a patient like that.
by Mortified in Massachusetts
xxx.xxx.49.21
May 09, 2017
