Skip to main content

Women's Healthcare

Did you know that doctors are to "do no harm" to their patients? I feel like it is made up, a gimmick in movies and television shows for the plot. I know I've been harmed, and I am not alone.
I have told you,  I have a garbage diagnosis "essential tremors with spasms." I got that diagnosis by the best neurologist I've ever had. It is, a garbage diagnosis though. It's a placeholder something real.

Last week, I met my movement disorder specialist. For the first time, I didn't feel like I was being a crazy person as I described my symptoms. He knew what I was talking about and it seemed reasonable to him. I've consistently seen neurologists for the last 15 years. The longest I've gone without  a neurologist appointment was 7 months. For 15 years I've been a crazy girl talking nonsense until I show a video and then, I still feel like a freak probably doing it to herself
I've been taken off all medication twice. Because that is the only way to see if my medications are causing the problems that I am having, and there aren't notes about my experience in my medical chart, so a new doctor may feel that I need that to do it again.  All of those helpful medications, garbage. 
As you know, a significant number of my issues had been hormonal.  There are about a million downsides to the hysterectomy, and honestly I work on not paying attention to those.  New doctors would be shocked about my use of dangerous birth control, and then end up putting me on medications with the same dangers.  My experience with the OB/GYN specialty (and  subsequently neurology) often left me in tears, and the truth is that my experience is not that abnormal. There are not a lot of options for hormonal based treatments, and I often felt as if I wasn't in charge or being fully informed.  When I started birth control, I had no idea the added risks from migraines with aura. I never had a conversation about it with an OB/GYN until I'd been on birth control for over 5 years.  Sometimes, I'm still struck by the severe loss of my ability to give birth.  Don't get me started on the essure.

All of this TRAUMA from the American medical complex was brought up by the book Everything Below The Waist by Jennifer Block. 
Everything Below the Waist was an amazing read.  It is filled to the brim with personal stories, facts and figures, and backed with research.  I could spend another month reading all of the articles referenced in this book, and that is so necessary when we are talking about women's health, because people suddenly get emotional and feel it's a political comment instead of healthcare.  This book should be required reading for any medical professional and especially for those in the American government that have impact on the care of women's health.  Spoonies would also benefit from reading this book, it is affirming to read the research and know other women share your experiences. As I stated, it was an emotional read for me, and I believe it will be for other women. Jennifer Block carried through everything you need to learn about women's healthcare in America.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pile of dead kids

Yesterday, I said I was thankful for my therapist.  Honestly I am not sure that I am thankful.  EMDR therapy is the right kind for me, it is working in an expansion of what I believe.  Yet I don't want to deal with the past memories that we are going to be looking at.  They suck. I am unsure if it is me holding back or maybe she really sucks. I am so triggered being back in Spokane and in this house.  It feels like I am walking through memories sometimes.  Today I keep thinking about a bunch of dead kids.  They used to be my friends or clients I worked with, but at some point as I kept getting older and they didn't, those friends and clients became kids.  Worse than that, they became dead kids just chilling in my mind.  I say pile of dead kids because it is rare that only one comes up in my mind at a time.   If one starts coming into my memory (even a positive memory) another one comes,  Until I end up with all of these dead k...

Sitting down

I've started this blog entry four times this week. First, I was going to tell you about being shiny with my goals. I was all about tracking and support. Those tools are really helpful and I was doing quite well. I had the post all typed out, then I got fired.  In the rest of the week, things got a little off track. There are days this week where I didn't track my progress. I didn't eat according to the plan each day. I didn't complete my full workout each day.  There was even a day where I didn't take my medications.  Knowing that getting off my medications for a day usually leads to migraines, why would I do that?  Why would I ever skip my exercises when my knees hurt less if I do them?  Why wouldn't I move around every hour knowing that I'm at risk for blood clots and strokes? Why would I eat a tub of french fries to make me feel better? As I got stuck this week, I kept asking myself those whys.  It seems like a labyrinth I'll never escape someti...

Mother's Day

I've disappeared for a few weeks (again).  It's because I was dealing with the real world consequences of being chronically ill and chronically poor. These are two things I link together so tightly I almost didn't put "and" in that sentence. I was being kept at a friend's house for a little over a week because I live alone and they were afraid I was going to die.  No one actually says that,  but the simple reality is that no one is saying, "Geeze you are kinda sick and gonna totes get better so please sleep on my couch." There were other reasons too; the simple life goes on when you're sick, birthdays and funerals. I haven't had hours at work which I'm thankful for because I couldn't conceivably go to work. I had a regular-person doctor's visit which turned into several "lets check if you have cancer" visits.  I don't. Yay for that. I removed one medication and added another. I'm having one medication taken aw...