@imvectech
(Couldn't find a language with the name 'awfull', falling back to eng.)

Annie Dote
27 May 2016 -@​

Today a female patient with 10/10 pain apologized for not being able to
"work harder" with therapy. The surgeon, when I expressed concern about
her pain control, said she had a "low pain tolerance and needed to tough it
out", and that this is what he had told her.

No wonder she was apologizing,

(Incidentally, I've never heard that surgeon be that explicitly callous with men
experiencing high post op pain.)

I talked to her nurse, female also, and expressed my concem that her pain
wasn't being taken seriously, and the nurse agreed that this was a concer,
and that gender was a likely culprit.

Then the nurse told me about having been diagnosed with cancer several
years prior, after 6 months of trying to get her doc to listen to her about her
symptoms. He kept telling her she was “anxious” and "tired" and just needed
Valium. Tumed out she had a massive tumor “which had been captured in
x-fay 3 months prior* but which they hadn't remembered to follow up with
because "anxious female"

So that makes 3 of my colleagues, medical professionals, who have had
‘major life altering conditions blown off or dismissed as "anxious female" with
prescriptions for Valium, not to mention my patients. And I'm thinking about
my progressive male friends who've unfriended me this election cycle (but
not unfriended our mutual male acquaintances who argued the same
points), and I'm feeling disheartened

So I guess what I'm asking is that if you're a dude, and you assume you're a
feminist and care about gender equality, please stop and consider the
possibility that you don't actually know how to listen to women when your
ego or assumptions are in play. And that this culture of dismissal Iiterally
puts our lives at risk. And please maybe try harder. And for God's sake
speak up if you see it happening,

Thank you In advance.

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