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"Women who survived coronavirus angry after persistent symptoms dismissed as ‘anxiety’ by doctors." Doesn't this sound familiar?

Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
I'm good at finding the irony in life. I'm also good at not being surprised by human ignorance, stupidity and cruelty after my journey with CFS.

Lately I've been wondering if doctor's nasty habit of refusing to take female patients seriously would affect the spread of coronavirus. I've know this is such a hard phenomenon to measure that I really didn't put any further thought into it.
That was until I read this article today:
"Women who survived coronavirus angry after persistent symptoms dismissed as ‘anxiety’ by doctors"

‘I’m so ill and some people are telling me this is a figment of my imagination. It truly feels like a nightmare’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...mptoms-havent-gone-away-anxiety-a9643041.html

"Women who have been suffering from prolonged coronavirus symptoms have hit back at doctors who they say fail to recognise their suffering and dismiss it as a psychological condition or stress.
Speaking to NBC News, Ailsa Court of Portland, Oregon, said that she had initially caught the respiratory disease more than four months ago but is still experiencing a number of debilitating symptoms.
She said that doctors have downplayed her complaints of persistent shortness of breath, pain in her lungs, and tingling in her calves, saying the symptoms are all in her head. “I’m so ill and some people are telling me this is a figment of my imagination. It truly feels like a nightmare,” she said. “‘Gaslighting’ is the word I’ve been using repeatedly.”

Ms Court explained that the lack of sympathy for her conditions has a gendered aspect and felt that a male patient who went to urgent care with the same set of health concerns would have been taken more seriously.

“There are long-standing biases that are omnipresent,” Dr Melissa Simon, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and the director of the Centre for Health Equity Transformation at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine told the outlet.
Past research has revealed that women are neglected in healthcare systems and are often inadvertently dismissed due to deeply ingrained unconscious bias of professionals.
A 2012 US study found that paramedics were less likely to take severely injured women to an emergency or other trauma centre (49 per cent of women versus 62 per cent of men).

Women are also less likely to be referred for testing if they complain of cardiac symptoms, and more likely to die after a serious heart attack due to a lack of care, research has found.

People of colour are also disproportionately affected by unconscious medical bias, with data showing that black patients in acute pain are 40 per cent less likely than white patients to receive medication, and Latino patients are 25 per cent less likely than white patients.

Alisa Valdés, 51, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, described a similar situation to Ms Court to NBC News, saying that she had been sick from the virus since mid-march and that doctors had said her problems were a “mental issue.”
She said that she felt doctors have been “minimising [her] as a woman, minimising [her] as a latina.”

She explained how she has experienced severe complications of the illness including emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder, extreme burning in her digestive tract, unbearable pain in her sternum and upper back, and a loss of appetite.
“Nobody is going to come right out and say that they’re discriminating against you for those reasons,” she told the broadcaster.
“So what do I have to go by? Intuition, instinct, past experience. The attitude of certain providers. The way they look at you. The way they don’t look at you. The way they shrug you off.”
Adrienne Crenshaw, 38, of Houston, who is black, contracted the coronavirus in mid-June and said she has been forced to make a number of trips to the emergency in the month since.
She told the broadcaster that she had not witnessed explicit racism or sexism during her treatment but said that doctors have often attributed her ongoing symptoms to stress and grief over the recent death of her father from the virus.
Ms Crenshaw, who has been prescribed anti-anxiety medications for her symptoms, said that on one occasion she heard a doctor say: “the girl’s perfectly normal, there’s nothing wrong with her.”
“In my head, I’m like, ‘I’m not perfectly fine. I don’t just go in the ER to take a room up,” she told the broadcaster.

Increased reports of long-term effects of the virus have been steadily emerging throughout the US as the pandemic continues to rage on, infecting over four million Americans.
Earlier in July, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, recognised the possibility that the disease could cause “a post-viral syndrome” in a news conference.
“If you look anecdotally, there is no question that there are a considerable number of individuals who have a post-viral syndrome that in many respects incapacitates them for weeks and weeks following so-called recovery,” Dr Fauci said.
“So this is something we really need to seriously look at because it very well might be a post-viral syndrome associated with Covid-19,” he added.

Read more here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...mptoms-havent-gone-away-anxiety-a9643041.html

These people will never ever admit to themselves they believe nonsense. Apparently it doesn't matter how many lives are at stake here, they really do want to think stupid things about women.

Stubborn biases toward female patients should be classified as a public health threat. I imagine bias has killed more female patients than some diseases have.

I don't find it shocking that doctors would still pull their usual "in your head," stunt about coronavirus. The problem is that this time, this behavior could spread the virus to countless innocent people. It's high time we demand that this sort of behavior stop before any more people get hurt or killed by it.

The angry part of me would say to any CFS denying doctor, "Now you get to see the harm that can be done when gullible people get convinced certain diseases are fiction."

The coronavirus pandemic sheds eerie light on how gullible people can become when an authority figure tells them something.

In my opinion, humanity cannot progress until people question authority. Lord knows we CFS patients could fare much better if people in medicine began to think for themselves instead of believing sexist dogma taught to them in medical school.
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

Senior Member
Messages
16,047
Location
Second star to the right ...
Stubborn biases toward female patients should be classified as a public health threat. I imagine bias has killed more female patients than some diseases have.
I totally couldn't agree with you more if I'd said all that myself. Which of course, like many other women, I sort of have.


Probably about a year ago I posted a thread here on this topic with 5 or 6 articles on the endemic medical biases against women. It didn't stir much interest. I'm going to try to find it, and if you don't mind, I'd like to post a link to it here in your thread. Would that be OK?

What's really dispiriting is that women themselves often refuse to admit to the biases that have shaped their mismanaged medical care.
The angry part of me would say to any CFS denying doctor, "Now you get to see the harm that can be done when gullible people get convinced certain diseases are fiction."
And the Dr would tell you that " .... that's all in your head ...." .....


The happy thought expressed by many members here that the massive number of COVID cases would turn around the medical community's opinion on the persistent, deeply debilitating, life-changing after-effects of this virus, so similar to ME, wa, and is, a pipe-dream.

Drs are fully equipped, ready, and more than willing to dismiss another 2-3 million patients as head cases. Their only other option would be to admit their profound ignorance of this illness and all others like it, and to do the research, put in the time and the admittedly daunting effort to learn something.

I'll repeat two things that I've said elsewhere in these threads, tho I cant remember exactly where or when:
  • In a questionnaire mailed out to Drs around the country with the promise of anonymity, one of the questions was: Did you ever cheat while in medical school? Fully 73% admitted that yes, they had. The details of that cheating, like the regularity, the extent and the type, weren't requested by the questionnaire nor received ...
  • What do you call the guy who graduates dead last in his class at Harvard Medical School?...........Doctor :grumpy: :grumpy::wide-eyed::wide-eyed::headslap:
 
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Messages
76
I'm good at finding the irony in life. I'm also good at not being surprised by human ignorance, stupidity and cruelty after my journey with CFS.

Lately I've been wondering if doctor's nasty habit of refusing to take female patients seriously would affect the spread of coronavirus. I've know this is such a hard phenomenon to measure that I really didn't put any further thought into it.
That was until I read this article today:


These people will never ever admit to themselves they believe nonsense. Apparently it doesn't matter how many lives are at stake here, they really do want to think stupid things about women.

Stubborn biases toward female patients should be classified as a public health threat. I imagine bias has killed more female patients than some diseases have.

I don't find it shocking that doctors would still pull their usual "in your head," stunt about coronavirus. The problem is that this time, this behavior could spread the virus to countless innocent people. It's high time we demand that this sort of behavior stop before any more people get hurt or killed by it.

The angry part of me would say to any CFS denying doctor, "Now you get to see the harm that can be done when gullible people get convinced certain diseases are fiction."

The coronavirus pandemic sheds eerie light on how gullible people can become when an authority figure tells them something.

In my opinion, humanity cannot progress until people question authority. Lord knows we CFS patients could fare much better if people in medicine began to think for themselves instead of believing sexist dogma taught to them in medical school.
My entire family told me it was hypocondria
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

Senior Member
Messages
16,047
Location
Second star to the right ...
My entire family told me it was hypocondria
Yeah, most people, including close friends and family members, maybe especially family members, really don;t know how to deal with this, so they automatically shunt it back on you.

Just keep a stiff upper lip, and hope that the sad long-term byproducts of COVID will force them to change their minds ....
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
The trouble is that some viral infections may precipitate generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). So it may actually be true that this patient is suffering from anxiety, but not psychologically-caused, but rather physically caused by the effects of the viral infection on her brain.

Once you have anxiety, this anxiety state may make you worry more about your symptoms, and you may come over as a little frenetic to the doctors. So the doctors may perceive you (correctly) as someone suffering from anxiety, and perceive you as someone who is overly concerned about their symptoms (that peception may be correct, or maybe incorrect, depending on the seriousness of the symptoms).

I have experienced this myself: I developed moderate-to-severe GAD from a chronic viral infection, and this made me much more concerned about the various other symptoms caused by this virus. And whenever I spoke to any doctors, my general demeanor was tense, frenetic, and over-excitable, which of course is a mental state picked up by the doctors.

So I suspect that sometimes, doctors may pick up that a patient is suffering from anxiety (which may be a correct diagnosis), and then the doctors may assume that because of the anxiety, the patient may be exaggerating their other symptoms (and they may be exaggerating, or they may not be — it's hard for the doctor to tell).



There is very little research into the mechanism of GAD, but we know that glutamate in the amygdala of the brain can trigger anxiety states, and we also know that brain inflammation can release a lot of glutamate. So if the virus causes brain inflammation, I suspect that's how the virus may induce states of anxiety.
 

YippeeKi YOW !!

Senior Member
Messages
16,047
Location
Second star to the right ...
@Hip
So it may actually be true that this patient is suffering from anxiety, but not psychologically-caused, but rather physically caused by the effects of the viral infection on her brain.
With all due respect, and I do respect you, this is beside the point in relation to what @Annikki posted about, and what almost ALL women have experienced at one point or another when applying to male Drs, and even female Drs, for help. Even @Rufous McKinney , who posted in my thread about that very thing, has experienced it.

Women are more often than not simply dismissed by Drs, sometimes with open contempt, regardless of the source of their discomfort / dis-ease. We deserve better. We have died in our hundreds, probably thousands, due to the reckless disregard and fly-flicking dismissal from the very people we pay to heal and treat us, who instead dismiss us as suffering from anything they can treat with a Rx pad, often with psychoactive drugs that make us worse, sometimes much, much worse.

I repeat, women deserve better, and we've been fighting for that "better" for decades. I can;t say that much progress has been made.

As far as glutamate goes, when I was discussing this with you in another thread 18 or so months ago, and referenced my relentless, killing anxiety/panic attacks, and my subsequent discovery of my extreme sensitivity to glutamate in any form, including to the ingredients in soft gels and capsules and soy sauce, which I'd always previously enjoyed penalty free, you posted back with "Are you sure you're not letting the recent bad press about glutamate and MSG influence you on this?" I was staggered. I responded, "Please. I'm not that simple ...."


This is a serious medical problem, causing huge numbers of additional iatrogenic deaths, and I'm deeply grateful to @Annikki for posting this thread. I'll add mine to it if she gives me the OK.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
what almost ALL women have experienced at one point or another when applying to male Drs, and even female Drs, for help

If there is inequality in the medical treatment that males and females get, then certainly this should be rectified. But we need more evidence it is really happening, and if it is, more understanding of why it is happening. I think it probably is happening; but it needs to be further examined.


I found the newspaper article second-rate, as it reports on just two cases of women who complain their symptoms are not taken seriously, and then seems to generalize those two anecdotes. But I've heard stories of men with post-COVID syndrome being told "it's all in their mind" as well.

Searching Google for "are women ignored by doctors", I found this this BBC article which talks about evidence that when women are in pain, they wait longer in emergency departments and are less likely to be given effective painkillers than men. But I think the BBC is a little biased its reporting: it tends to side with the underdog minorities, and will omit any facts that contradict the view that the minority is unfairly treated. SO there might be other explanations for this delay in getting painkillers.

I wonder if the male orientation to being more dryly logical in speech and explanation, and the female orientation to being more emotionally expressive in their explanations (in general), may influence the way a patient's description of his or her symptoms are perceived by the doctor. If it does influence perception, then the blame would lie less with the doctor, and more with the person doing the explaining. Potential factors like this should be taken into account, if we want to better understand the problem.


I think the MUS (medically unexplained symptoms) issue may also play a major role in this. Women tend to suffer with far more MUS diseases than men. For example, fibromyalgia is 9 times more common in women compared to men, ME/CFS 4 times more common, interstitial cystitis 9 times as common, IBS twice as common. It's these MUS diseases that doctors traditionally view as "all in the mind", and thus tend to ignore patients' symptoms.

So this might explain in part why doctors are apparently ignoring women's symptoms: it may not be so much that they are ignoring women; it may just be that they are ignoring MUS.

Of course that is not right at all, doctors should not be ignoring MUS illnesses.

I think this susceptibility to MUS illnesses may (incorrectly) paint women, in the eyes of the doctors, as people who tend to complain about nothing. When a patient complains about their MUS symptoms, and then the doctor performs tests which find nothing wrong, the doctor may start viewing MUS patients like the boy who cried wolf, always complaining of symptoms when tests suggest nothing is there.

Since women have far more MUS diseases than men, some doctors may start (incorrectly) viewing woman as patients who complain for what these doctors see as no reason. That may then affect the way doctors view all women (even if those doctors are themselves female).

So MUS could play a big role in why doctors might tend to ignore certain symptoms like pain in women.


Are women generally treated unfairly by the medical profession though? If you look at the total lifetime healthcare spending in the US, it is approximately $360,000 for women and $270,000 for men. See this study. So women are getting more healthcare than men.

Two-fifths of this difference is due to women's longer life expectancy, the study says. Nevertheless, these figures do not suggest that women are getting less healthcare in general.



As far as glutamate goes, when I was discussing this with you in another thread 18 or so months ago, and referenced my relentless, killing anxiety/panic attacks, and my subsequent discovery of my extreme sensitivity to glutamate in any form, including to the ingredients in soft gels and capsules and soy sauce, which I'd always previously enjoyed penalty free, you posted back with "Are you sure you're not letting the recent bad press about glutamate and MSG influence you on this?" I was staggered. I responded, "Please. I'm not that simple ...."

Some people are scared of MSG not because it is generally harmful (it is consumed in high amounts in Japan), but because of the bad press it has got, a bad press which is probably disproportionate to any ill health effects it may cause in some sensitive people.

So that's why I enquired whether you might be unconsciously influenced by the bad press. I was not assuming that you were influenced, but I bet a lot of people are.
 
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Davsey27

Senior Member
Messages
514
Yes I wonder what it will take for docs to change.The CDC diagnostic criteria is very clear.Despite living not far from the CDC in Atlanta I was surprised to see Drs i encountered not aware of this.And told it's in my mind.

Even with more cases post covid i am still skeptical that doctors will take this seriously.

If there planning to cut Social Security retirement at
some point it would make sense that they would be
dismissive of this.
 

Zebra

Senior Member
Messages
851
Location
Northern California
If there is inequality in the medical treatment that males and females get, then certainly this should be rectified. But we need more evidence it is really happening, and if it is, more understanding of why it is happening. I think it probably is happening; but it needs to be further examined.


This IS happening, and it HAS been further explored, @Hip.

You stated that the news article that @Annikki posted was "second rate."

If you are, genuinely, interested in becoming better informed on this topic, please read the book Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery.

Z
 
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Zebra

Senior Member
Messages
851
Location
Northern California
I wonder if the male orientation to being more dryly logical in speech and explanation, and the female orientation to being more emotionally expressive in their explanations (in general), may influence the way a patient's description of his or her symptoms are perceived by the doctor. If it does influence perception, then the blame would lie less with the doctor, and more with the person doing the explaining. Potential factors like this should be taken into account, if we want to better understand the problem.

If you are genuinely interested in this issue, please read one of the many well-researched and fact-checked books on this topic, such as the one I mentioned in my previous post.

Z
 
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Booble

Senior Member
Messages
1,391
A little support for @Hip from a female here. I think the point is well taken that our physical conditions DO cause anxiety whether because of physiological reasons, general fear or a combination of both.
I'm still suspicious of MYSELF and my 2-4 month long virus. First month was odd but relatable viral (cold/cough) but second month was a weird blend of things including lack of appetite, weakness and fatigue. Was I anxious? Hell yah, how can you not be when your body is doing weird things and you feel so bad? So what part of my sickness was fear and what part was the actual virus or my bodies reaction to the virus? What part of the fear was from cytokines or something else from the illness? I don't know!

That said, I think because there is a perception that men don't go to the doctor unless they are really, really, really sick, it's easy for Doctors to mistakenly give more credibility to a man that shows up in their offices than a woman.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
This IS happening, and it HAS been further explored, Hip.

Can you point me to the studies which demonstrate this inequality? Is there published evidence that female patients are having their symptoms ignored across the board of medical diseases? Or is it mainly only in MUS diseases?



If you are genuinely interested in this issue, please read one of the many well-researched and fact-checked books on this topic, such as the one I mentioned in my previous post.

I am not really able to read books, due to substantial reading difficulties I developed after a damaging viral brain infection. But I am able to read short text summaries or study abstracts without too much difficulty.


If we are going to enter into gender politics, let me say I don't think it was a good idea for this journalist to frame post-COVID syndrome a female-only issue. It's true that post-COVID syndrome affects women 4.5 times more than men (according to an informal survey), but it hits men too. So this is not exclusively a female condition.

It would be like saying that death by COVID-19 is a male issue, because coronavirus kills twice as many men as it does women.

I think it would have been better for the journalist to point out that post-COVID syndrome is likely to be viewed as a MUS illness or somatization, and that all MUS illnesses are traditionally largely ignored by doctors. And then focus on the issues of MUS, which are important issues. That would have made a better article.
 
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toyfoof

Senior Member
Messages
1,173
Location
Sedona, AZ
This stuff goes so far back. I remember learning in 6th grade biology class about psychosomatic symptoms. The example the teacher gave was, say you have a big test and you’re worried about it, and you wish you could somehow miss school, and your body takes over and gives you a headache that you wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the test worry.

I had been getting migraines for about a year at this point, and missing a lot of school, and this really messed with my head. I thought I was somehow bringing these headaches on myself, because I was an over-achiever who did get anxious around tests and schoolwork. So I thought I couldn’t complain about the headaches because they weren’t really real, and I felt so guilty whenever I got one.

I think this had a lot to do with me not seeking help when my ME was mild (I told myself it was all in my head, I was lazy, etc.) and even when it was spilling into moderate. I was very lucky to have a (female) PCP who believed me, but didn’t know how to help, and she sent me out to so many specialists who did the exact thing we‘re talking about here, gaslighting me, telling me to find Jesus, to stop researching, betting me my tests would come back normal and then will I accept it’s in my head and go away like a good girl? And I had to fight SO HARD against that 6th grade voice inside me that was in line with these doctors.

And yes, women pay more in healthcare, not because we’re getting more/better treatment, but because we are forced to go to multiple doctors and run the same damn tests over and over again and we don’t get a nice straight path that a man with chest pain would get. I mean, I’m just guessing, I haven’t seen the study, but the fact that it costs women 10s of thousands of dollars more than men to get healthcare doesn’t read as a positive, to me.

Circling back to 6th grade and pyschosomatic symptoms, I bet med students are taught about this in year one. And then it’s reinforced in residencies by older doctors who were also taught it. “If it has hooves” and so on. It’s such a convenient answer to someone in a profession whose ego is on the line. (And I say this as someone who I think is more trusting/willing to give the benefit of the doubt to doctors than most people here.)

I ache so much for these women (and men, I know they’re experiencing it too) who are COVID long haulers and facing this. COVID should be like a free pass to doctors taking you seriously, and the fact that it’s not is so distressing.
 

Booble

Senior Member
Messages
1,391
It's probably hard for doctors because there ARE so many people where things are "all in their head." How do they reliably distinguish? Determine the best course of action to separate the two? And again, what about when the two intersect?
 

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,249
But you say when it comes to a female arena like this, males are not entitled to comment or offer opinions?

I wished to add my two bits here: Hip, your fully entitled to have your opinions in my opinion and I think we need to able to share these opinions. The moment one forms- there will be somebody to disagree, logically or with expressive emotion.

Opinions are also things which, upon further review and analysis, one might change one's opinions.

If we never make a stab at taking a position, sometimes we just stay in the same state, rather than moving along.

So I appreciated your opinions despite strongly disagreeing with some of what you said.

We will: disagree. The topic- needs open discussion so we can- further work thru it.
 

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,249
This stuff goes so far back. I remember learning in 6th grade biology class about psychosomatic symptoms. The example the teacher gave was, say you have a big test and you’re worried about it, and you wish you could somehow miss school, and your body takes over and gives you a headache that you wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the test worry.

This entire topic- lead me to a Life Review- and it goes way way back. And its in every arena.

its gotten better.

But still on the chain of bias continues.

I did quite a bit of reading about MUS diagnoses- and it seems again and oddly co-incident that many of them- are the autoimmune type illnesses that have been selected somehow for further- Ignoring.

Women's health care- BTW- much of those cost discrepencies stem from women are sent for standard tests like Pap Tests and endless mammograms , and sometimes birth control pills are covered. If I had listened to them, I'd have had my breasts exrayed 27 times too many already by now.