I Told My Doctor I’d Been Living In Debilitating Pain For 7 Years. His 2-Word Response Was The Final Straw.
The author in 2016 with his children.
How painful is there to be too painful? Where do you draw the line? Last June, I asked myself these questions while sitting at the cold exam table in Ob-Gyn’s office at that time.
I always had painful monthly periods. They worsened in my 20s and became challenging in my 30s. And when I hit perimenopause a few years ago, I started to take weakening periods twice a month.
In June that day, I explained to my doctor that I had bleeding almost all month and that I was constantly suffering. Advil and even prescribed narcotics did not touch the pain. I went to four for being bedridden two days a month. I was very depressed. Was that the rest of my life?
Since I have a history of the family, the family’s uterus and ovarian cancer, I thought it was the best to see it as things felt “closed”. Apparently … he got angry. And in a hurry.
He spent two minutes on the ultrasound of the uterine lining, then “Everything looks good!” He said.
“But,” I said, “I am very bleeding, my iron is low.
He shrugged and said, “Take iron vitamin for deficiency,” he said.
Then he added two words that were so useless, missing empathy, and it turned out that the last straw was so Clueless: “Periods hurt!”
Not to do everything inside me he Incind it at that moment. He had no idea what I felt, he had no idea how much period was suffering. I wanted to scream and swear to him, and I told him that he would break it even a minute after this pain. But I was quiet because of life conditioning. I was even polite.
I was used to not being taken seriously until then. I had doctors who despise enough in my life, my boy’s doctor told me that I told me that I told me that ç calm down and not worry too much ”because he thought my hives were caused by anxiety. It turned out to be Fifth disease.
This Ob-gyn wasn’t even rejected me for the first time. For the last seven years, every appointment, I mentioned how my cramps were so terrible and so often, that I can barely walk, no medication has reduced blinding pain. It worsened every year.
And I believed him every time he told me that this was the case in endometriosis or perimenopause. I believed in my doctor because I trusted his (stupid) authority. I believed him because the suffering is subjective (Maybe I just had a low threshold for pain?). I believed him because I didn’t know how to defend myself.
Later, I learned that I was not alone in feeling misunderstood and not heard: 2024 “Gender Pain Gap” The questionnaire revealed that more than 80% of women’s suffering was rejected by a healthcare professional. One -third of the women who participated in the survey said that their mental health was in pain as a result. Colored women Worse, and he got the worst treatment of everyone.
My doctor’s beep sound stolen. “I have to go to the hospital to deliver a baby.”
This time I was enough. Once home, instead of being upset about myself, I immediately searched for female gynecologists who specialize in women’s health, especially after years of construction.
Two days later, in his 50s, I made my own ultrasound, who took my family history, and I was in the office of my new doctor who had found a large number of “polyps that need to be biopes immediately in the uterine lining. The same primer, my other doctor, just two days ago, after a fucking gaze, “he looked good,” he said.
Tempura / Getty Images
“It should not be surprised that he suffered a lot,” he said, verifying the last seven years for me.
The pain of women has been taken less seriously than men for a long time. A study New England Medical Magazine In the midst of women’s heart attacks, the wrong diagnosis and discharge is the possibility of being seven times higher. From where? Because the medical concepts of most diseases are based on an understanding. male physiologyAnd women have completely different symptoms than men while they have a heart attack. Women have to wait longer It is more likely to be seen by healthcare professionals, less painkillers and their pain is psychological.
After bioptting my new doctor my polyps – in an adulthood full of terrible gynecological procedures, we learned that they are benign. He sat with me again and asked: “Have you thought of hysterectomy with your family history and continuous pain and blood loss?”
Although no other doctor offered me this, I thought about it. Some of the other women in my family – my mother, my cousins - 40s had hysterectomy. One of my aunts died only at the age of 49 after a war with uterus and ovarian cancer. I felt like marking the bombs of my uterus and ovaries: what was I expecting? My childhood years had passed. My two daughters are now young. I want to be alive to raise them.
I got a second opinion for the next few weeks: the reliable general practitioner admitted that this was the best way. I planned my surgery after accepting that the insurance would meet it. The date was set at the beginning of August to minimize my ovaries and uterus minimally invasive laparoscopic.
My last day with the reproductive organs was emotional. Although they caused me such despair, they were responsible for my daughters, who had two biggest joy in my life. Two bright, stubborn, wildly funny children took three rounds of IVF and 99 eggs taken out of my ovaries to get the world.
I delivered it at 6 am on the day of surgery. In the end, I had a team of all female surgeons, nurses and doctors who thought of everything: they gave me a few medicines to “prepare pain receptors”.
“These will make your heal less painful,” he said when one of the nurses poured a warm blanket on me. He took the team time, answered every question I had, and passed through the procedure. I felt cone with care, kindness and respects. Compared to my old Ob-Gyn, Dr. “Periods hurt!” – This was a very refreshing.
I thought of my sweet father who died two years ago just before he got under anesthesia. When I was a child, after my siblings or to him, I thought about how to talk about a fight or issue we had at school: “Next”. He would allow us to ventilate, then encouraged us to take a deep breath and leave behind.
I didn’t have to stay in the hospital overnight. I easily healed as I entered the temporary hell with surgical menopause. The same doctors directed me to the best types of hormone replacement treatment to combat my first hot flashes, migraine and brain system.
Now, I’m happier than ever. The pity is completely gone. I just noticed how much pain I suffered in the absence of pain and how long.
I have a brand new capacity for joy and being, not entering the mercy of pain anymore, and I feel a real sense of ownership over my own body. I wish I only had the operation earlier. I wish I had fired my Ob-gyn when I gasped about what I had lived for the first time.
I would tell my daughters, my sister, my best friend, or any woman to find a doctor who is comfortable and really listening to you. If you are dismissed or disrespectful, ask yourself: If I were a man, would they treat me like this? Find a doctor who believes in women. It may sound open to the ear, but not: pity has been underestimated by my doctor for years and ignored.
This was an awakening for me last year. In a country where the pain of women is less serious than men and is more hostile to women and health services, I decided to give priority to my own quality of life. I will no longer discount myself. You don’t have to live in pain, and there’s nothing noble about silent pain. Life is too short.
Now, as my father said: Next.
Carrie Friedman lives with his family in Southern California, and was published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. Website www.carriedman.com.
This article emerged at the beginning HuffPost In September 2025.
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