Dear Doctor,

Dismissing my Pain Won’t Make it Go Away.

As an otherwise young and “healthy” person, nobody wants to admit that something could go wrong. This includes the various healthcare professionals that I have seen as mysterious symptoms began disrupting my life three years ago. These unpleasant and often hostile meetings with the healthcare system left me with deep distrust and instinct to avoid them at all costs.

However, when I was struck by the most intense pain I have ever experienced, my fear of what the pain might mean sent me to the place I had come to avoid. There comes a point where you are hurting so much that you know you can’t actually solve the problem on your own. By my slightly messed up standards that point is quite extreme pain. This sudden attack of pain was the kind that makes you scream out loud and writhe on the floor. It was the kind where you instinctively make a fist and curl your toes inwards. I was unable to move or speak and I could feel tears covering my whole face although I couldn’t remember when I began to cry. After half an hour I blacked out, whether from the pain alone or something else, I don’t know. It was bad enough to scare the people around me, and they were the ones who made the decision that someone had to intervene.

The intervention did not go to plan. The doctor wasn’t able to see me for another few hours. By that time, I still couldn’t walk or stand unaided but the scream-inducing sharpest parts of the pain had subsided with help from an unhealthy amount of painkillers. I described the incident to her and she simply looked at me and said “when is your period due?” I chuckled a little and tried to explain that this was not a cramp. This was the most intense pain I had ever felt. But I answered honestly and said it could come within the next few days. Wrong answer.

The scariest experience of my life was now downgraded to me overreacting to period cramps. The conclusion being that I needed to toughen up a little. The way I was treated that day only served to confirm all my previous experiences. Treated like a hysterical young woman being overdramatic about something as normal and simple as period pains. Treated in a manner that told me I was wasting the doctor’s time and I should feel guilty about that. Sent away feeling humiliated and beginning to doubt myself- wondering if I really was just being silly. I wasn’t offered any kind of exam, follow-up or other kind of consultation that may lead to my pain being reduced.

Since then I have had three more of these attacks. Nothing that am able to do at home can make the pain subside, I just have to wait it out. But a medical authority figure has told me that I am being dumb, and it’s nothing. Just because she said it was nothing, didn’t make it go away. It just lessened what tiny bit of faith I had left in the system that is meant to help me, and discouraged me from seeking help another time. In fact, that visit made my life in the long-term worse rather than better.

Being dismissed when you are at your most vulnerable, and being treated as someone who is looking for attention, being overdramatic or wasting the system’s time, hurts. Perhaps the answer to my problems is very simple and a pill could change my life for the better. But without someone who listens and cares and believes me, I might never know.