‘Have you tried being less stressed?’ the doctor suggested. I did my best to hide my frustration.
For the better part of four weeks, I’d been dealing with a full-body rash, which had suddenly become red and increasingly sore. Then one morning in May 2024, taking a shower felt like acid rain.
Upon my GP’s advice, my boyfriend, Adam, and I went to A&E, and this was the response I received. I felt like I wasn’t being heard, my experience invalidated.
Then Adam spoke up. ‘She’s in a lot of pain and needs help,’ he said calmly and clearly. ‘The advice so far hasn’t improved things and it’s getting worse.’
The doctor listened and prescribed a strong painkiller. I felt relief – as well as confusion.
My medical history is complex (at best) and I have grown up feeling dismissed.
I developed symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety and depression around the age of nine, all of which were disregarded as a ‘phase’.
Over the last 30 years I’ve experienced a number of mental health conditions – bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder and depression – as well as ongoing physical concerns, and I have frequently been told that my mental health is the cause of my physical symptoms.
It wasn’t until anorexia took hold when I was 14 that medical professionals took things seriously.
I had multiple life-saving hospitalisations but was subsequently given many new diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and body dysmorphic disorder.
Unfortunately, these interventions came too late. I developed further complications, including psychosis and hallucinations, paranoia and agoraphobia, with complex PTSD (cPTSD) suggested eventually in my 30s as being at the root of it all.
I felt as though I was viewed as an attention seeker – in reality, I was crying out for help.
As I entered my thirties, physical issues including musculoskeletal pain and digestive problems came to the fore. Again, doctors dismissed these as psychological in origin, as though my pain was an extension of my depression.
As a result, I stopped trusting my own body and started believing their dismissals. I went along with whatever was said because I didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. And I internalised that misogyny not to ‘be a burden’ and to stop ‘making a fuss over nothing’.
I also stopped visiting my GP, which, unsurprisingly, impacted my health further, and any treatment I did receive seemed to be massively delayed. At times, I felt utterly lost, alone.
It wasn’t until that A&E experience in 2024 that I finally wondered: Why had it taken Adam’s advocacy for doctors to respond? Why had they responded far faster to his voice than mine?
Finally, I realised: It was the clearest case I’d ever experienced of medical misogyny.
Sadly, I’m not the only woman to experience it. According to one study, the UK has the highest gender health gap out of all the G20 countries and medical misogyny contributes to misdiagnoses, inadequate pain management and delayed treatment.
The same research found that 60% of women in the UK believe their health issues are not taken seriously, and 57% of women have had a negative experience with a healthcare professional.
Those figures are devastating yet there is little being done to eradicate them. Meanwhile, women are still suffering.
Had Adam not driven me to A&E, convinced me to endure the six-hour-long wait to be seen then spoken to the doctor himself, I suspect I would have been cast aside again.
Later that week, when we collected steroid cream prescribed for my rash, it was only thanks to Adam pushing back against the pharmacy staff that I received the correct amount instead of a bottle no bigger than the size of a travel toothpaste.
I’ve no idea why I was initially issued such a small tube, I think it might have been the correct dosage that had been prescribed but too small a dosage to cover my entire body.
The rash covered every inch of my body from neck to toe, but we were given a tube that would’ve dealt with a rash on the back of your hand.
It’s infuriating and unjust that a man’s voice seems to still command more authority than a woman’s in this day and age. Whether I’m getting my car fixed or calling for a plumber, people often defer to my male partner.
This kind of dismissal in healthcare is especially dangerous. It jeopardises women’s wellbeing. I wonder how many of my medical problems could’ve been prevented had I not had my complaints ignored.
No woman should have to feel like they need to bring a man to an appointment just to get the doctor’s attention.
Medical training must stamp out medical misogyny at the source and culturally, we need to encourage people to stand up for themselves when they aren’t getting the care they need.
I’m trying to get better at that. I’ve spent enough of my life waiting to be heard, but no more. I’m starting by calling myself and my internalised misogyny out.
Every single person, of any gender, should be listened to when it comes to their health. We will not stand for being dismissed anymore.
(As told to Hannah Shewan Stevens)
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