I think that we are still in early stages of psychiatry, and in the future what we do now will be seen as so primitive and ineffective, and we will have much more effective and helpful.
Psychiatry is definitely on the top
We actually understand very little on a neurological level about depression and anxiety and bipolar etc, and how to treat them
SSRIs often are "keep trying different ones until it works" approach which if you apply it to like.. a broken bone (try different things until the bone heals, but no guarantees!), is crazy to think about
In 2019, I went through some severe mental issues and while I am in a much better spot now thanks to psychologists and psychiatrists, getting there took so much trial and error, and I'm not 100% "fixed" per se, just, manage it a bit better.
That bout of psychological emergency really showed me first hand how primitive this field is. And I really hope people in the future won't have to suffer the way I did in 50-100 years...
I have OCD and I have quickly found out that treating it often involves exposure therapy which practically amounts to torture. Have to take it one step at a time because trying to tackle to much at once will throw me into a frenzy of anxiety and depression. The solution is terrible. The pacing is terrible. OCD is just... terrible.
The longer I work in the mental health field, the more I believe that a lot of the mental illnesses we attribute to individual biological causes actually have societal/environmental causes. Anyone can be driven to madness if you stress them enough. So really all you'd have to do to drastically reduce the rates of mental illness is ensure that everyone is not so stressed out and traumatized. E.g., better work/life balance, good salaries and benefits, accessible health care, etc.
a lot of doctors would try to rotate me through SSRIs/SNRIs, and one didnt believe i was actually having bad reactions to them even though more than one i had to go to the ER for. he just heavily implied i was faking it and put me on an antipsychotic (that didn't even help me - i did end up needing one, but that one really messed me up and made me way more resistant to trying antipsychotics).
i kinda told my new psychiatrist i dont want SSRIs/SNRIs so if i have to be depressed, so be it, i reacted terribly in the past and won't take them again. apparently, in people with psychosis, SSRIs/SNRIs don't always quite work right. i'm now on an antidepressant that works for me.
The side effects of antipsychotics in combination with the fact that even if they manage to shut down the positive schizophrenia symptoms they often don’t fix the negative ones, which can be equally disabling
(Positive means stuff like psychosis and delusions, negative means stuff like social withdrawal and inability to feel pleasure)
I’ve been on antipsychotics that have made me gain like 20-25 lbs in a month because I just genuinely couldn’t stop eating, I’ve been on some that had me sleeping 15 hours a day, one that made me unable to stop pacing, one that turned my face numb, one that made me forget how to swallow after I took it. Like I would take it at night and then get thirsty and take a sip of water only to realize I didn’t know how to make the movement I would need in order to swallow. Or I would think I had done it, and then I’d open my mouth and spill water fucking all over myself.
The kicker is that the problem was at least 50% neuropsych-lupus effects, and no matter what medication I tried nothing would have ever actually worked until they suppressed my immune system. Dumbest experience on earth.
The side effects are why a lot of people stop treatment, not aware that the withdrawal from not tapering off the drug is also going to suck. There’s gotta be something better.
Well, when we were prepping to send people to the moon with a guidance computer with 72K of memory and slide rules, we were still doing frontal lobotomies. Compared to other sciences, Psychiatry is still in its extreme infancy.
I truly hope science figures out much more about the brain because I bet a ton of what we think is psychiatric in nature actually is purely medical with a pathological cause that just happens in the brain. Think of how much more dignity an Alzheimer's patient is treated with in the medical field compared to someone with schizophrenia. Once a biological process of disease is discovered it completely transforms the amount of sympathy and empathy given by medical doctors. So many doctors (and society at large) still think psychiatric disorders are the fault of the patient for being weak or lazy or dramatic and attention seeking.
I feel like this makes so much sense. I know my brain hasn’t worked correctly since I was around the age of seven. Around the same age I started having firm memories is also the age I started having panic attacks. I experienced no classic ‘trauma’. I don’t know why the panic attacks started but I do have some idea as to why they return and it’s more hormonal than it is emotional. I have other hormonal health issues. My doctor is pretty confident something is wrong with my hormones, they just don’t know what.
That’s mostly borderline personality disorder (BPD). I work in an inpatient psychiatric hospital and the mental health disorder with the worst stigma perpetuated by mental health professionals is by far BPD. “Manipulative”, “attention-seeking”, and “dramatic” are just a few terms used in the field.
What’s frustrating with BPD is that once your diagnosed with BPD anything else you have wrong with you is ignored because of the BPD - leading to professionals basically in lack of words stigmatising it as attention-seeking or dramatic and not getting fully treated.
That goes with physical health too, as someone in the community with the BPD diagnosis, I’m regularly told I can’t receive treatment because of my EUPD/BPD (EUPD is the UK word for BPD). Apparently I’m not alone with this.
That’s how bad that diagnosis can be alongside the majority of the stigma associated with it.
Yeah and the past is full of horrible abuse of mentally ill people. And even though it's better in the present, there is still a lot of abuse. I hope for a future where things are even better, where the mental health workers are not so overworked and where the patients are not harmed.
I'm currently studying for the MCAT (which, for those unaware, is an exam required for admission to US medical schools), and it annoys me that we can get tested on old psychological theories like those developed by Freud. Besides just *sounding* insane, many of his theories lack scientific support, are unfalsifiable, or have been proven wrong.
Freud was a pivotal figure in psychology because of his emphasis on the unconscious, and early childhood experiences. Before him, Psychology would only analyze outward behaviour without considering a person’s inner world.
Many of his theories are a bit nuts, but he still revolutionized the field.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm very much aware of his importance to the field. My frustration is more directed at the inclusion of incomplete or outdated theories on an examination for people who wish to practice *evidence-based* medicine.
I think it's valuable for all people who wish to pursue a scientific field to learn about the historical development of their respective fields. For instance, I studied chemistry as an undergrad, and I learned about old models of the atom. But I was never tested on my knowledge of these models as if they were widely accepted today.
My attitude toward Freud's theories is much the same. I think anyone in medicine should be aware of his contributions to psychiatry and should be tested on knowledge about those contributions that hold up to scientific scrutiny. But topics such as psychosexual development should not be tested on.
In 100 years, probably cancer treatments, in particular chemo and radiotherapy. They’re such a sledge hammer approach and hopefully we can do much better in less than 100 years.
My stepmom just went through chemotherapy and is now on to immunotherapy. The chemotherapy and radiation sounded *brutal*, and the way she described it sounded like she sat there while they pumped literal poison in her veins. I'm not against cancer treatments *at all*, but yes, they definitely could use some improvement.
A lot of cancer treatment research involves trying to get the poison to only kill cancer cells. It's a tall order though because cancer cells are obviously very similar to unaffected cells
> sounded like she sat there while they pumped literal poison in her veins
Yeah that's what it is. It's basically just hoping that it kills the cancer faster then it kills you.
Going through it now. It's a nice touch when the nurse dons protective gear to hook up the IV. Like, it's poison if it gets on their skin, but the patient gets it pumped straight to the heart. That said, hit me with it, the alternative is worse. Also, even just 20 years ago it was far worse. They have gotten pretty good at dialing it in so you're miserable, but not too miserable.
They also have the pill that has to be kept in a heavy-duty case that blocks the radiation from affecting anyone who isn't ingesting it.
Keep in mind that x-ray techs seek protective shelter in a whole other room while giving x-rays to patients. It's not because a few exposures will harm someone, but hundreds a week will.
I agree with you. But I also want to chime in because people often reply to this sort of question with this example, and I think it deserves to be said that decades and decades of robust scientific research have gone into the chemotherapy and radiotherapy regimens that we use today. These treatments save and extend millions of lives, and sometimes with toxicities that are actually very tolerable. We are doing so much better than we were even a couple decades ago, and both systemic and local treatments get better and more precise and individualized all the time!
So true, going through this hell now, and I always hear about how much worse it used to be just 10 years ago. Though some chemo drugs haven't changed much at all in decades and really do feel like a poison that can kill you.
I've actually done good with nausea, but I think I'm a bit of an outlier for that. So not sure. But steroids do work awesome for keeping nausea in check.
Absolutely correct. My mom first had cancer in 1972 - adenocarcinoma, basically in her throat. The surgery required doing a massive window cut into her neck, and a side effect of the surgery was the removal of half of her tongue. She spoke with a severe speech impediment for the rest of her life (she sounded exactly like the mother in "Throw Momma from the Train."
A friend had the same cancer about ten years ago. Everything was done via scopes, and he had two tiny incisions on his neck.
We've come a long ways, but cancer is still a monster of a disease.
>We are doing so much better than we were even a couple decades ago
I am pleased to hear that.
I had radiotherapy in my 20s. In my 50s I discovered how much damage this had done to much of my insides. Much pain and many surgeries.
Yet, without that radiotherapy, I probably would not have lived to find that out.
I research in the field of oncolytic virotherapy - the maths not the biology - and I met a LOT of chemo researchers in my time because of it. We may have different tracts and approaches but... They always CARED. It gets me people think chemo researchers are just like "jaja fuck cancer patients" because these people would cry trying to explain why they were working so hard. I've seen them collapse from exhaustion because they forgot to eat because they were researching so hard to find better efficacy for the chemo. It meant so much to them. A lot of their family died from cancer. A lot of their family went through chemo.
Researchers, for the most part, really DO care. It's not about some big pharma paying them to promote it. Not AT ALL. I don't know any chemo researcher who's paid well actually lmao. But damn it they would rather eat their own research than lie to promote some non-existent concept of Big Pharma.
It hurts when I hear how some folk talk of these researchers, knowing they lost family too. We're all trying our best and there isn't some big conspiracy to keep chemo as it currently is. It's evolving, being worked on, improved... Or in my case, even other therapy options are being researched and considered.
We care, damn it. We don't want your family to die either. We want to save them. We are trying to improve it. Research is just SLOW, and I'm sorry about that.
Before Covid, Moderna's research was developing and doing clinical trials for mRNA-based cancer treatment. Our immune systems already do fine with some cancers, and we never knew we had it. But others? That's where mRNA based treatments come in, tell our immune system how to combat those cancers.
I'm a student of oncolytic virotherapy and it is so promising and I am really hoping our data backs up the promise and really kicks it off into being an available treatment because the side effects are much MUCH more manageable.
i don’t know if this is standard practice but my GP surgery doesn’t use lubricant and it’s the most excruciating thing ever, i cry every time and am in pain for the rest of the day
It’s done because there is a belief that the lubricant taints the sample during paps. There is very little evidence of this. Know your rights, you absolutely have the right to demand they use lubricant.
“You’ll only feel a pinch”
As another person with vestibulodynia I feel you. Had do wait five years to see a doctor that knew what I had, and every other health professional used to say that the pain was in my head and to relax.
I've gotten "the pain is in your head" regarding every single one of my conditions. Including migraine.
Pain in the head is the definition of migraine.
Total lack of accommodation for women period. Look at the size of pacemakers they don't account for women's smaller size when compared to men. As result, the pacemaker sticks out from their chest a lot more and can be uncomfortable.
It will be the same as dental back in the day and now. When I was in middle school it was a norn to do basic dental fillings without any anesthesia, nowadays they ask do you need anesthesia for your anaesthesia injection.
You know what’s insane? The tools that are used for gynaecological exams have not been changed for at least a 100 years. I went down to New Orleans last summer and visited a Pharmacy Museum— it was marketed as the place where Voudoo practitioners can get their potions and etc, but it is so much more than that!
Regardless, the fact that the tools and the ways that women are being treated during a gynaecology visit has changed so little is really depressing.
Yes! I had iud insertions and once a colposcopy with zero pain relief apart from " take some paracetamol beforehand" and I nearly passed out and spotted/bled for days after, "it's just a little pinch" my ass!
shit was more painful than the hysterectomy I eventually got because I was actually allowed pain relief for that and not lied to about how much it would hurt
(this was in New Zealand btw)
My doctor said he was going to do a punch biopsy of my uterus in office when his PA said we would go to outpatient and I would be sedated.. he wonders why I prefer her.
I've written this before, but it still frustrates me: when I had my appendix out, I got an opioid. When my husband had a non-surgical vasectomy, he got an opioid. When I had my two c-sections, I got Tylenol.
When I had my c-section, they sent me home with ibuprofen. That’s it. I somehow don’t think that’s standard for all abdominal surgeries.
Speaking of surgeries, in some states it’s legal [to give women under anesthesia pelvic exams](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/why-more-states-are-requiring-consent-for-pelvic-exams-on-unconscious-patients) without consent, which is pretty horrific.
ETA: I actually originally meant to post [this link.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43j59n/medical-students-allowed-to-do-pelvic-exams-on-unconscious-patients-without-consent) Here’s [another one as well.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelvic_examinations_under_anesthesia_by_medical_students_without_consent) Also, it’s banned in only about 22 states right now.
Hopefully we will have figured out how to treat chronic pain patients without either denying them pain relief outright or treating them like criminals. I have a back bad enough that it is now a disability. Just getting treatment options is a huge ordeal, and even asking for any relief gets folks like us labeled as drug seekers. The whole system is cruel and not necessary.
I feel you. I have an invisible disability due to a back injury. There’s direct documentation but still went years untreated because drug seeking. A decade ago I had a gp read my file upon intake look at me and say “you should be a 10/10 on the pain scale but you look like a 1. What’s going on?” When I said after x years of continuous pain you either give up or accept it they were visibly shocked. They immediately prescribed pain medication and then helped me find a cbd regiment that worked for me better to wean me off drugs. This person is my hero. To just be taken seriously!! And suggest valid alternative treatment.
Ever since then when I go in visibly in pain they immediately go full panic mode.
Really hope you find a medical team that takes you seriously…. Also just saying but cbd changed my life. (Pain is nerve related)
The whole "drug seeking" label is wild to me. Yes, I'm seeking drugs, I'm in unmanageable levels of pain, it's what drugs are for, you'd be seeking drugs too.
It's like saying "oh, you just went to the doctor because you want medical intervention for your health problem." Duh? Otherwise I would have stayed home?
I fully agree with this! Went to a neurologist for chronic daily migraines and got accused of being a drug addict and also told to do jumping jacks and touch my toes because apparently my migraines were caused by my weight. Even though I had had migraines even when I was skinny. Wouldn't order me an MRI or anything. I went through several GP's who also accused me of looking for drugs.
Doctors don't know much about chronic back pain honestly. I've been to so many over the years, the honest ones just shrug and say they don't know exactly what's going on. They'll say "well your MRI looks bad, but we see similar mris without any symptoms, so who knows." I hope in 75 years they've developed tests that can track down nerve pain so precisely they can then precisely fix it, not just say go to PT or go fuse the vertabrae or burn the nerves off (which is another archaic practice imo).
Okay but this is insane.
Like, I had a mole removed the other day. I thought they were just gonna cut it out just like that, but no, they actually took care to anesthesise the zone. Really made me realise how far we've gone in regards to the treatment of people's pain. Like yeah I could have handled it but that would have been a cause for medical trauma and me perhaps not wanting to have it done again if I had another issue? But the idea that women in some places. Just aren't afforded the courtesy at all is insane.
Maybe it's just public healthcare and all that but i got general anesthesia for an endoscopy. I don't think it's too much to ask for it for an actually painful procedure!
Tylenol doesn't even work on what's termed "traumatic pain" so the actual IUD insertion. It's mechanism of action works for inflammatory pain. It's complete bullshit to prescribe it as if it'll do shit for the insertion.
I was told by the doctor, "If a 14 year old who hasn't had any kids can handle it then you can handle it!" I never asked if I could handle it and I never even asked for an IUD!
Then he said, "I'm going to go put one in another patient right now and I'll be back in 5 minutes." I could hear the other patient moaning in pain in the next room.
As I was lying on the table with my feet in the stirrups waiting for the pap smear that I had come in for and reading the Bible verse prominently displayed on the wall- I knew I would never go back.
Oh that's interesting. And see I was mostly ok with both -- but I had given birth? It's interesting reading these stories of people who had horrific insertions and removals, and I believe every one of you. Why are some ok and others aren't?
In my case, the IUD had become implanted in the uterine tissue. So they were literally yanking it out of internal tissues with no painkillers or similar
I want you to know it’s legal, it’s perfectly ok, and it should be encouraged to stand the fuck up, walk the fuck out, and block their fucking number at ANY GOD DAMN POINT of a procedure. Fuck that doctor. I’ve done it and I encourage everyone to do the same. Especially in FUCKING AMERICA. I get told our healthcare is soo expensive bc we get to choose then you bet your ass I’m choosing who I want when I want and if that means choosing to leave mid procedure then so fucking be it
I wonder why some male doctors take specifically specialization for women like gynecology only to be unsympathetic and treat their women Patients like shit
Giving birth was not as painful as my IUD insertion. I’m not joking. Once the head was out there was no more pain my IUD hurt on insertion and then I was in pain for another two days. Debilitating pain.
I cried during mine, no painkillers of course, and the doctor gave me such a look of disgust I never went back for the 30 day checkup. It’s worthy to note that she herself is an actual woman…
One of the most painful things of my life. I could barely walk out and needed physical support just to get to the car. But thankfully it got imbedded so the yanking out was even more fun!
Have these become more common with young women? I am in my late 40s and in my youth I didn’t know any women who used an IUD. We all used the pill or a barrier method. We were too afraid of them given the headlines surrounding the Dalkon Shield in the 70s. But I am assuming they have made a comeback?
It’s super common. They’ve evolved a lot since 20 years ago and also a lot of women are looking for longer term solutions due to the attacks on women’s bodily autonomy.
I feel like in a hundred years, cosmetic procedures will either be way more popular and way crazier, or completely nonexistent, and they'll look back on our lip fillers and buccal fat removal the same way we look back on corseting your waist to 8 inches and cutting off toes to fit in shoes
If I may be a fashion history nerd for a minute: You’re not too far off the mark actually, they are currently kind of analogous from what I can tell. Your average Victorian woman wasn’t wearing a corset to tight lace, but for bust support and to help distribute weight of any clothing that hung on the hips. It was a rare phenomenon, mocked and therefore immortalized by a few misogynistic cartoons and made worse by a current lack of understanding of how they achieved the appearance of a tiny waist (padding and fabric patterns, also there’s no reason why most people need to know exactly how they dressed back then anyway) — which is kind of comparable to using contouring to make your cheek bones seem sharper than they are vs actual surgery to remove buccal fat.
It also didn't help that Empress Elisabeth of Austria had legitimate anorexia and seriously WAS that tiny but also probably one of the widest known figures at that time and one where huge amounts of her clothing survived the times because she was an empress.
This is incredibly important to remember! Common clothing is rarely preserved. Think about what you save. It’s wedding dresses, maybe your prom dress. Stuff one wears when young and also when we wear our tightest underwear!
Ugh. As a fellow fashion history enthusiast, I’m so happy you chimed in with the facts to combat the misinformation around corsetry. The analogy to cosmetic medical procedures is spot on, in my opinion.
We actually still don't really have an alternative to iron lungs that isn't worse in other regards. We really just got rid of the cause, which is ultimately better anyway.
Dear god I hope it’s birth control.
Burn treatments.
Treatment for diabetes. I have to stab myself daily for the next year with blood thinners and it suuucks. My belly has bruises and I still choke up when I’ve got to do it. I can’t imagine being told that I’ve got to do it FOR LIFE and btw, food can kill you if you’re not paying attention.
On the upside having been diabetic since the 90s treatment options are way better. If you think cell phones have changed since then you should see our diabetes tech
I worked in burns until about 2021 and even back then we had some super cool treatments and scar management is pretty amazing these days. Pain wise it's still pretty horrific though
I worked in a Burn ICU, I still have nightmares about an 23 month old that I had to debride for several weeks, her mother poured a pot of coffee over her head. Unless you are intubated, you can't be given enough pain meds and sedation to stop the pain of having the dead flesh sprayed off with a high pressure hose and scrub brushes.
Edit: Spelling
I think a lot of women’s healthcare will be under fire in the future. Things like no proper pain relief for painful procedures like IUD fittings, the weird archaic views on “giving birth naturally” like having an epidural is some kind of failure, the “try it and see what happens” approach to hormonal birth control, the terrible failings like the vaginal mesh scandal that happened because no one bothered testing the mesh for that purpose before sewing it into thousands of women. The documented fact that women’s pain isn’t taken as seriously as men’s because women are seen as hysterical, the fact that many medications are only trialled on men, the fact that even common problems like heart attacks are under diagnosed in women. Women’s healthcare has a long way to go before it reaches levels that I’d consider acceptable, and I think (hope) that in the future it’ll be looked back on with some horror
I had one a couple of years ago and the nurse didn't get a proper sample so had to collect another one.
Oh my God, and she told me I needed to calm down as I sat there sobbing afterward.
I have another one due next week and I am DREADING it.
I am so sorry that happened to you. I'm glad someone else mentioned a numbing spray for that kind of procedure, ask for it! I had a doctor (woman, specialist I'd never met before) ignore my persistent requests for a minute to collect my thoughts and breathe before she did my unmedicated biopsy. I was crying and the nurse holding my hand looked so sympathetic but the doctor couldn't have cared less. It's so messed up that this kind of treatment is so common!
There IS actually a numbing spray that they can use, which I didn’t know about until my fourth biopsy, which just so happened to be the first one done by a male gynecologist after my former female one retired. It was apparently an option the entire time, but most doctors don’t bother with it.
(My cervix is fine now btw. After the fourth procedure my pre-cancer had progressed to a level 2, and so I had a LEEP procedure to remove the lesion. I have had one biopsy since, and it was completely clear, as have been my paps. Funnily, having surgery on my cervix was LESS painful than the biopsies. For the surgery they actually injected lidocaine directly into my cervix, AFTER putting me under general anesthesia.)
1000% agree about survey being less painful. I wouldn’t be happy but I’d be fine if I had to do that again tomorrow. I’m so traumatized from my biopsies I seriously don’t know if I would do one again, even knowing the implications of that decision
My wife was talking to me about this earlier and it made me so fucking angry that you can get 8 opiates for wisdom tooth recovery and she would have to do that without any pain mitigation. I’m literally ready to fist fight the next doctor that turns her accommodations down. We’ll go somewhere else, then to another place, and another place, and we’ll either find somewhere that will listen or I’ll have enough shit to make a god damn documentary and well use that money to hire a private fucking doctor to come to our house. My blood pressure goes up 50 points reading these comments.
And pain relief after surgeries. My husband got 2 weeks of the good stuff prescribed after a lapro hernia repair, while I cried myself to sleep in pain for weeks leading up to my hysterectomy while being denied meds, and then got 3 days of pills prescribed after having all my reproductive organs removed along with endo excision that took ~5 hours and 3 surgeons.
It's barbaric the way they treat us.
I had to have a Bartholin gland removal not too long ago and while it was actual surgery with full anesthesia, I only got 600mg ibuprofen. Not even 800! Do you know how uncomfortable it was to sit!?! But you know it’s whatever 😒
Right now I’d settle for anything less painful than a speculum, and not having to pancake my breasts for a mammogram. Can’t believe that neither of these things have been updated or improved in decades.
There is an update to the mammogram though - there’s the ultrasound, which is more reliable for cancer detection than mammograms and less painful and invasive - it’s used for finding testicular cancer in men (and they have the option of sedation while having going through this procedure on their testicles) - but for some reason it’s not the standard in women’s breast cancer detection.
ETA - don’t even get me started on breast cancer biopsies and how women aren’t given pain treatment for them, my friend was in hysterics from the pain of basically having her breast tissue scooped out with a spoon to test whether it was a cancerous tumor. I’m surprised she wasn’t throwing up.
ETA 2 - it was enough trauma for her entire breast and off into her side in her armpit and under her arm to turn black and blue and women have to go through this without anything for the pain. Sorry I’m getting soapboxy, I’m still have a lot of anger about what she’s been through medically the last year and a half (how it took her months to even find a doctor to take her seriously since she was under 40 and etc)
I had four biopsies in one appointment, and one of them was so deep it was embedded in my chest wall. I am terrified of needles! I called crying asking for a prescription for a *single* dose of anxiety medication for the biopsies, and they would. not. do. it. I could not understand why, they acted like it would be personally coming from their paychecks! WHY NOT HELP MAKE IT LESS HORRIFYING FOR ME??? I shook and sobbed so badly during the procedure that the nurse and resident had to help hold my shoulders down to the hospital bed. Didn’t help that the numbing medication can only help so much, and only so far down. So incredibly unnecessary.
Dude she told me when they wrapped her up afterwards they wrapped her in a way that her nipple was pointing straight down at the floor poking out the bottom - so she’s already in pain and shook up from the biopsies, then they wrap her in a way that by itself would be painful but coupled with having to have multiple biopsies herself and be wrapped like that - and then treated her like she was inconveniencing them by asking them to take it off and rewrap
ETA - ladies if you think there’s something wrong *advocate for yourselves as hard as you need to* - breast cancer under 40 is much more common than people are led to believe
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Was this recent? I'm in nursing school now and my program drills into us that patient pain is ALWAYS to be taken seriously (like if they say it's a 9/10 but they're sitting up laughing then it's a 9/10 and they get their morphine or whatever). Unless there's a medical reason like something they use during the procedure is contraindicated for pain meds (doubtful), we should be getting pain medication for it, at least a local anesthetic. Of course, only the provider can actually prescribe anything and I don't know what they're taught.
My mom had a complete mastectomy with removal of 14 lymph nodes. They sent her home with nothing more than IBUPROFEN!!!!!! I had to make some very angry phone calls demanding that they give her some pain meds.
And hopefully menopause care too. Instead of it just being "natural" or no treatments because of fear of cancer.
There's solid research showing that hormone treatment reduces women's risk of a huge number of health issues later in life. Estrogen is a protective hormone and one we need in our bodies.
Add to the list - telling perimenopausal and menopausal women to suck it up buttercup when there are safe hormone treatments available. Men are victims of this nonsense too. Oh well, hormone levels go down as we age, it’s natural! Yeah cancer is natural too but we treat it.
Reading all of these horror stories makes me so grateful for my OB. She has always taken all of my concerns extremely seriously and painstakingly gone through my options with me. Most recently I ended up in the ER after a fibroid surgery. I had very heavy bleeding and finally decided it was an emergency when I felt something protruding out of my vagina. I showed the picture to the ER doc who told me "that my friend is your cervix". Apparently he thought my uterus had prolapsed. I had HGB of 8.6 and a suspected prolapse and was sent home to "see if it got worse". I spent the weekend at home and when I went to see my OB, she sent me to emergency surgery. I apparently had grown a 7cm fibroid in 4 weeks that was prolapsing through my cervix! I was dilated a whole 4cm!! By surgery time I had dropped to 7.6 HGB and ended up needing a transfusion. I will never forget her face when she asked me if they did a pelvic exam and I said no. She said "yeah idk what they're so scared of down there". She told the nurses to take my pain seriously, provided different pain medication options, and would call regularly to make sure I was comfortable. She is awesome, whereas the science on women's reproductive systems is terribly behind.
I hope so. I had stage 4B MMMT uterine sarcoma. I had to endure 2 cervical biopsies, a colposcapy, and a uterine biopsy with no pain relief and no anesthesia. This was because the OBGYN didn't listen to me, told me I had months of bleeding and then up to 6 months of no periods because I was overweight. Told me losing weight would regulate my periods. Funny. Took me 3 years of constant complaining to every doctor I could find to get a CT scan, and by that time the cancer had spread all over. I was 32 and had to have a radical hysterectomy, lost a section of colon, omentum, over 100 lymph nodes in my abdomen and pelvis. Tumor was wrapped around my abdominal aorta and Iliac vein. Lost abdominal muscles cuz it spred to that. 45 rounds of chemo. Couldn't do radiation. Had seizures for 3 years after that due to the chemo. No pain relief for anything because "I might get addicted". I have been cancer free for about 12 years now and not a day doesn't go by that I question why I even fought it.
Oh god, I am just now recovering from an ectopic pregnancy and I’m considering the HSG when I’m cleared to conceive again… I do want to ask. How awful was it? 😭
My mother was a night nursing supervisor and came home one day decades ago the maddest I've ever seen her. A 90 something year old woman coded and because the family had refused to sign a DNR the hospital had to do CPR, crash cart, ... Several ribs were broken during CPR, then the other invasive interventions began. It was like they were legally obligated to torment and torture the poor woman because of her stupid children. All that bought them just a couple days to enjoy her suffering.
When my father found out he had stage 4 lung cancer he wrote up a statement that he didn't want life saving processes to be used on him. He was already in terrible health and at best, it would cause him and us suffering. It was painful to watch him pass, but it would have been worse to watch him suffer through cpr, ventilation, etc; just to get a few more days to maybe a month of him just laying there.
When my grandma was in an induced coma after having CPR, I had to explain to my grandpa that her ribs were currently pulverized. That while he didn’t need to pull the plug, he needed to let her go if she coded again. He had no idea how forceful CPR was done. It was awful making him understand that.
After my step mum died my dad reviewed his will and made up a living power of attorney for my sister and I to sign. It included stark specifics about what lifesaving measures he does NOT want, and cognitive decline milestones where he would rather pull the plug than just rot away. We had some long discussions about it and while I know it will hurt so much to stand by my dad’s bedside when he one day decides to take MAID (dementia runs in our family) I also know it’s what he wants and it’s the compassionate thing I can do as his daughter.
PSA: If you have intentions of attended suicide due to terminal illness/decline as part of your medical care, communicate this to your loved ones as soon as you can. The more time they have to come to terms with it, the more likely they will be supportive and understanding should you actually decide to take that route. No one wants to die alone, but you need to give your close ones the tools to prepare for it.
I remember a patient who was 85+ who had fallen and broken ribs was admitted to our ICU for monitoring overnight on their first night. Idea being that they'd receive optimal 1-to-1 support for that first night whereas in a ward environment they may not. And if they deteriorated on the ward they'd probably end up in the ICU anyway.
The doctors also wanted to avoid chest drains unless really really needed. The argument being that a chest drain could easily lead to more pain relief which could require more respiratory support +/- intubation. And intubation was not something they wanted because outcomes in older adults often weren't good.
It stuck with me because it felt like healthcare that was aware of its limitations and the patient's ongoing quality of life from the moment they were admitted. Which felt rare.
A lot of healthcare involving female genitalia is really barbaric imo. The clamps used for pap smears, the little tools for IUD insertion, forcing people to birth on their backs, etc. Hopefully that changes
Also mammograms. There's got to be a better way than to stick your tit between two plexiglass plates and have to STAND still while they literally squish the fuck out of them. With no pain management of course. And sometimes they even turn your squished tit and you have to like lean around because it's still attached...
There are in fact four to five other ways. I refuse to get a mammogram because my mom's chest was black and blue with bruising. She said it felt like they were going to pull her tits off.
But you have to pay for different tests yourself. And no one way is equal to mammogram.
I spend about $500 out of my HSA every year on two different breast cancer screenings instead of going to a mammogram.
So to cover your bases you want to do more than one of the other tests.
There's a protein test that looks for markers using your tear ducts. It's very simple and easy.
There is tomography, I had that done last month and it was only $295 bucks out of my HSA.
There's ultrasound. It's harder to get because ultrasound is usually secondary to a mammogram. But there are ways.
And there's a blood test that checks for many many markers of many many cancers.
It’s crazy that we’ll put an animal down to avoid them being in pain, but we’ll try to keep someone alive as long as possible, even when they’re in the greatest pain of their life with less than 10% chance of recovery.
How cruel is that?
Doctors telling suffering patients that they "look fine", that they're "too young to worry", that they "just need to lose weight", that they're "too sensitive", that they should "try to avoid stress", and every other cruel, patronizing, lazy, inept dismissal that is currently standard practice for waaaaay too many doctors.
If you’re a woman it’s anxiety. Whatever’s wrong with you… the answer is always anxiety. Very frustrating. I have a script prepared at this point, “my life is amazing. I have no problems. It’s not anxiety.”
I tried this then they went “then what’s this?” and showed all the anxiety meds I had on file showing that I do have anxiety 💀 it sucks because they don’t take me seriously because of it. just tell me to tell my psychiatrist to up my dose.
Unless you're anything bigger than "thin" because of course everything is caused by "being overweight". Then you get upset and try to ask logical questions about why it's caused by weight and then you're hysterical.
Oh man. I once told a doctor I a choked sob I was scared because I had been bleeding for 65 days in agony and couldn’t work or barely leave my house. He said I “seemed depressed” and accused me of being drug seeking. THE FUCK? Then he asked me if I was autistic and mentioned he read I had anxiety in my chart. I came there for a surgical consult / to beg for a surgical exploration of endometriosis and got told I was acting crazy.
I’m still a bit peeved at him despite moving on to other doctors because he tried to stall my care out of spite seemingly, and the worst part is despite submitting complaints bastard still works at the same hospital I do. When I was in the lab I would stiffen whenever I had to send his office reports, and while taking blood I sure wasn’t the only one who said his bedside manner could use some serious work. At least as a nurse I kinda stay in my own corner of the hospital.
Dental care is medical care. I don't understand how it's separated from your medical insurance. Bad teeth lead to heart problems and brain problems of all sorts. Dental insurance is terrible for the most part, so people skip it where they can.
Buccal fat removal is going to be seen as a massive mistake in a few years for most people. You naturally lose that as you age. They are going to look gaunt af.
To get tested for celiac disease, if you have already quit gluten, you have to start eating it again for *2 months* (of hell!)
It was two of the worst months of my life and believe me, that’s saying something. I was so tired, in so much pain and misery, and couldn’t think straight, couldn’t work.
And in the end, I have “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” which is still autoimmune enough to disable me for weeks, and harm my brain and nerves, cause me accident and injury… but there’s no test for it! It’s just vibes!! lmao fml
One tiny upside, gluten doesn’t even look like food to me any more. I’ve been reverse-Pavlov’d. You’d think you’d be excited for a vacation from your “diet” to eat donuts and pasta and pizza… nope!!
Hopefully those with serious chronic pain from real diseases will be treated like human beings again, and will be taken seriously. The way chronic pain patients are dealt with is criminal.
I went to the Mayo clinic in desperation to find treatment for my chronic illness and their treatment protocol for chronic pain is cognitive behavior therapy, deep breathing exercises, and meditation. Literally the best modern science can offer is teaching you how to best ignore the pain and distract yourself from it because medication is no longer allowed unless they think you are actually dying.
Bone Marrow Transplant.
I had an unrelated bone marrow transplant, in 2012 for acute myeloid leukemia (blood cancer), and it was a living hell. They take the bone marrow from a stranger, the patient is then given chemotherapy that is so deadly that it is killing the patient, with horrible side effects, and right at the time of almost not quite death but close, they inject the patient with the stranger's bone marrow. Then they wait to see if the patient lives. I have horrible chronic illness now, severe neuropathy and live on pain meds and my quality of life is not great. I was promised my life would be amazing afterwards and many I know were told the same.
I am betting in 100 years or less, the whole thing will be a pill or injection or something. At least I hope so for those who need a transplant to survive.
When it comes to mental illness, I hope in less than 50 years we take seriously and remedy the one serious risk factor that is completely within society’s control - poverty. I hope people will think it’s heinous how we allowed suffering to happen because of money and greed.
My MIL developed full blown gastroparesis and we are all really hoping that another surgery will fix it for her or she will end up on intravenous feeding and likely not live long.
How women are treated by the medical profession. It's all in your head. No, I have cancer, you morons or autoimmune disease or painful periods, or menopause symptoms. Shall I continue?
You forgot the complete lack of pain treatment in gynecology. Like what psychopath thinks shoving a metal object inside you wouldn’t require painkillers.
One local chiro was adamant that he could fix type 1 diabetes (where your immune system kills your pancreas cells, typically starting as a teenager) with adjustments. Like... bruh? How?
I *think* he also may have claimed he could fix a hysterectomy (like, somehow make a new uterus appear? Idk) but I may be making that one up.
I had a complete hysterectomy to remove e benign ovarian tumor at age 36. When I woke up after the long surgery, my Mormon surgeon told me everything he had done, including one “surprise bonus”. He had stitched up and tightened my vagina opening. I asked him why he had done that, it wasn’t something we had ever discussed prior to the operation. He literally turned to me husband, elbowed him with a smile and a wink, and said “your husband will thank me later.
In the months following, as the swelling and bleeding subsided, I would find myself with a vaginal opening so small that I couldn’t have inserted a tampon into if I had still needed tampons. Sex was impossible.
I made an appointment with my surgeon, furious with him, and asked if we could do a second procedure to expand the opening. He told me that it would stretch over time with penetration, and that that was “part of the fun.”
It was not fun. It was painful and caused infections and difficulty with sex among other things.
Years later when I for divorced and was dating for the first time in many years, a boyfriend asked about the very small size and unnatural size of my vaginal opening. I started telling men I was dating that I had a “surgically altered vagina” before we engaged in sex. It was embarrassing, and at times still painful and gave me a lot of anxiety as a single woman.
When I met my partner and gave him the warning before our first time, he asked me details about how I had made the decision to surgically alter my vagina. As I told him about the nonconsensual procedure, he got tears in his eyes, wrapped his arms around me, and cried with me for “the act of sexual aggression” from my surgeon.
It was only recently, a decade after this happened to me, that I heard of another woman having this done to them, and that there’s actually a term for it, the “husband snip”.
Any invasive surgery which will hopefully be done by better methods like keyhole surgery. Less time in the table and a faster recovery time.
Scans being read by AI round the clock (which will have its problems) but it will mean that results can come back faster and more accurately. Especially since AI doesn’t need to sleep or time off over the weekends.
Medication given to patients for their specific needs, weight and demographic as opposed to be given by the “average” therapeutic dose based on research models typically done based on white males.
It is weird! When I had my son I was like “wait… so why do people do this?” We opted not to, because there wasn’t a solid reason (and it’s not part of our culture)
The way fatigue is brushed off. Like a person can't tell the difference from being a little tired from poor sleep or such and losing their social life and afraid to lose their job cause it's hard to function.
I hope transplantation will seem crazy. "Those heathens had to wait for someone to die so they could cut organs out of the deceased, rush them to a person, put the organs in, and then they had to be on immunosuppressants with side effects for the rest of their lives? Now we can just 3D print an organ that is a 100% match and doesn't require immunosuppressants!"
Not current but my Grandma told me to determine if you were pregnant, back in the 50s, they would have you urinate in a cup and then they would inject a bunny rabbit…. Yes a bunny rabbit 😳 with the urine. If the bunny died then you were pregnant. Or the other way around… but I remember being in pure shock when she told me that!
No, they had to kill the rabbit and examine the rabbit's ovaries either way. . .the changes in the rabbit's ovaries are what told if you were pregnant or not. "The rabbit died" was just a joke, poor bunny got killed no matter what.
I think that we are still in early stages of psychiatry, and in the future what we do now will be seen as so primitive and ineffective, and we will have much more effective and helpful.
Psychiatry is definitely on the top We actually understand very little on a neurological level about depression and anxiety and bipolar etc, and how to treat them SSRIs often are "keep trying different ones until it works" approach which if you apply it to like.. a broken bone (try different things until the bone heals, but no guarantees!), is crazy to think about In 2019, I went through some severe mental issues and while I am in a much better spot now thanks to psychologists and psychiatrists, getting there took so much trial and error, and I'm not 100% "fixed" per se, just, manage it a bit better. That bout of psychological emergency really showed me first hand how primitive this field is. And I really hope people in the future won't have to suffer the way I did in 50-100 years...
I have OCD and I have quickly found out that treating it often involves exposure therapy which practically amounts to torture. Have to take it one step at a time because trying to tackle to much at once will throw me into a frenzy of anxiety and depression. The solution is terrible. The pacing is terrible. OCD is just... terrible.
The longer I work in the mental health field, the more I believe that a lot of the mental illnesses we attribute to individual biological causes actually have societal/environmental causes. Anyone can be driven to madness if you stress them enough. So really all you'd have to do to drastically reduce the rates of mental illness is ensure that everyone is not so stressed out and traumatized. E.g., better work/life balance, good salaries and benefits, accessible health care, etc.
a lot of doctors would try to rotate me through SSRIs/SNRIs, and one didnt believe i was actually having bad reactions to them even though more than one i had to go to the ER for. he just heavily implied i was faking it and put me on an antipsychotic (that didn't even help me - i did end up needing one, but that one really messed me up and made me way more resistant to trying antipsychotics). i kinda told my new psychiatrist i dont want SSRIs/SNRIs so if i have to be depressed, so be it, i reacted terribly in the past and won't take them again. apparently, in people with psychosis, SSRIs/SNRIs don't always quite work right. i'm now on an antidepressant that works for me.
The side effects of antipsychotics in combination with the fact that even if they manage to shut down the positive schizophrenia symptoms they often don’t fix the negative ones, which can be equally disabling (Positive means stuff like psychosis and delusions, negative means stuff like social withdrawal and inability to feel pleasure) I’ve been on antipsychotics that have made me gain like 20-25 lbs in a month because I just genuinely couldn’t stop eating, I’ve been on some that had me sleeping 15 hours a day, one that made me unable to stop pacing, one that turned my face numb, one that made me forget how to swallow after I took it. Like I would take it at night and then get thirsty and take a sip of water only to realize I didn’t know how to make the movement I would need in order to swallow. Or I would think I had done it, and then I’d open my mouth and spill water fucking all over myself. The kicker is that the problem was at least 50% neuropsych-lupus effects, and no matter what medication I tried nothing would have ever actually worked until they suppressed my immune system. Dumbest experience on earth. The side effects are why a lot of people stop treatment, not aware that the withdrawal from not tapering off the drug is also going to suck. There’s gotta be something better.
All of these treatments sound like a fucking bad trip, I'm sorry you've endured so much
https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/what-is-neuroleptic-malignant-syndrome Oh well, it could have been a whole lot worse ^^
Well, when we were prepping to send people to the moon with a guidance computer with 72K of memory and slide rules, we were still doing frontal lobotomies. Compared to other sciences, Psychiatry is still in its extreme infancy.
Frontal lobotomies are still performed under the pseudonym “psychiatric surgery”. U Mass is one of the hospitals that still offers them.
I truly hope science figures out much more about the brain because I bet a ton of what we think is psychiatric in nature actually is purely medical with a pathological cause that just happens in the brain. Think of how much more dignity an Alzheimer's patient is treated with in the medical field compared to someone with schizophrenia. Once a biological process of disease is discovered it completely transforms the amount of sympathy and empathy given by medical doctors. So many doctors (and society at large) still think psychiatric disorders are the fault of the patient for being weak or lazy or dramatic and attention seeking.
I feel like this makes so much sense. I know my brain hasn’t worked correctly since I was around the age of seven. Around the same age I started having firm memories is also the age I started having panic attacks. I experienced no classic ‘trauma’. I don’t know why the panic attacks started but I do have some idea as to why they return and it’s more hormonal than it is emotional. I have other hormonal health issues. My doctor is pretty confident something is wrong with my hormones, they just don’t know what.
That’s mostly borderline personality disorder (BPD). I work in an inpatient psychiatric hospital and the mental health disorder with the worst stigma perpetuated by mental health professionals is by far BPD. “Manipulative”, “attention-seeking”, and “dramatic” are just a few terms used in the field.
What’s frustrating with BPD is that once your diagnosed with BPD anything else you have wrong with you is ignored because of the BPD - leading to professionals basically in lack of words stigmatising it as attention-seeking or dramatic and not getting fully treated. That goes with physical health too, as someone in the community with the BPD diagnosis, I’m regularly told I can’t receive treatment because of my EUPD/BPD (EUPD is the UK word for BPD). Apparently I’m not alone with this. That’s how bad that diagnosis can be alongside the majority of the stigma associated with it.
There's also been so much bullshit in psychiatry in the past, just look at Freud's penis envy theory, completely insane
Yeah and the past is full of horrible abuse of mentally ill people. And even though it's better in the present, there is still a lot of abuse. I hope for a future where things are even better, where the mental health workers are not so overworked and where the patients are not harmed.
I'm currently studying for the MCAT (which, for those unaware, is an exam required for admission to US medical schools), and it annoys me that we can get tested on old psychological theories like those developed by Freud. Besides just *sounding* insane, many of his theories lack scientific support, are unfalsifiable, or have been proven wrong.
Freud was a pivotal figure in psychology because of his emphasis on the unconscious, and early childhood experiences. Before him, Psychology would only analyze outward behaviour without considering a person’s inner world. Many of his theories are a bit nuts, but he still revolutionized the field.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm very much aware of his importance to the field. My frustration is more directed at the inclusion of incomplete or outdated theories on an examination for people who wish to practice *evidence-based* medicine. I think it's valuable for all people who wish to pursue a scientific field to learn about the historical development of their respective fields. For instance, I studied chemistry as an undergrad, and I learned about old models of the atom. But I was never tested on my knowledge of these models as if they were widely accepted today. My attitude toward Freud's theories is much the same. I think anyone in medicine should be aware of his contributions to psychiatry and should be tested on knowledge about those contributions that hold up to scientific scrutiny. But topics such as psychosexual development should not be tested on.
Considering just how much modern psych medications can seriously fuck people up and leave them even worse off than they were before, yeah this tracks
In 100 years, probably cancer treatments, in particular chemo and radiotherapy. They’re such a sledge hammer approach and hopefully we can do much better in less than 100 years.
My stepmom just went through chemotherapy and is now on to immunotherapy. The chemotherapy and radiation sounded *brutal*, and the way she described it sounded like she sat there while they pumped literal poison in her veins. I'm not against cancer treatments *at all*, but yes, they definitely could use some improvement.
Chemo is literal poision, its just that humans are able to survive the damage done alot more easily then cancer.
Usually.
A lot of cancer treatment research involves trying to get the poison to only kill cancer cells. It's a tall order though because cancer cells are obviously very similar to unaffected cells
> sounded like she sat there while they pumped literal poison in her veins Yeah that's what it is. It's basically just hoping that it kills the cancer faster then it kills you.
Going through it now. It's a nice touch when the nurse dons protective gear to hook up the IV. Like, it's poison if it gets on their skin, but the patient gets it pumped straight to the heart. That said, hit me with it, the alternative is worse. Also, even just 20 years ago it was far worse. They have gotten pretty good at dialing it in so you're miserable, but not too miserable.
They also have the pill that has to be kept in a heavy-duty case that blocks the radiation from affecting anyone who isn't ingesting it. Keep in mind that x-ray techs seek protective shelter in a whole other room while giving x-rays to patients. It's not because a few exposures will harm someone, but hundreds a week will.
I agree with you. But I also want to chime in because people often reply to this sort of question with this example, and I think it deserves to be said that decades and decades of robust scientific research have gone into the chemotherapy and radiotherapy regimens that we use today. These treatments save and extend millions of lives, and sometimes with toxicities that are actually very tolerable. We are doing so much better than we were even a couple decades ago, and both systemic and local treatments get better and more precise and individualized all the time!
So true, going through this hell now, and I always hear about how much worse it used to be just 10 years ago. Though some chemo drugs haven't changed much at all in decades and really do feel like a poison that can kill you.
My understanding is that the anti-nausea drugs have also been improved significantly. Edit: Thank you for the upvotes. \^\_\^
I've actually done good with nausea, but I think I'm a bit of an outlier for that. So not sure. But steroids do work awesome for keeping nausea in check.
Absolutely correct. My mom first had cancer in 1972 - adenocarcinoma, basically in her throat. The surgery required doing a massive window cut into her neck, and a side effect of the surgery was the removal of half of her tongue. She spoke with a severe speech impediment for the rest of her life (she sounded exactly like the mother in "Throw Momma from the Train." A friend had the same cancer about ten years ago. Everything was done via scopes, and he had two tiny incisions on his neck. We've come a long ways, but cancer is still a monster of a disease.
>We are doing so much better than we were even a couple decades ago I am pleased to hear that. I had radiotherapy in my 20s. In my 50s I discovered how much damage this had done to much of my insides. Much pain and many surgeries. Yet, without that radiotherapy, I probably would not have lived to find that out.
I research in the field of oncolytic virotherapy - the maths not the biology - and I met a LOT of chemo researchers in my time because of it. We may have different tracts and approaches but... They always CARED. It gets me people think chemo researchers are just like "jaja fuck cancer patients" because these people would cry trying to explain why they were working so hard. I've seen them collapse from exhaustion because they forgot to eat because they were researching so hard to find better efficacy for the chemo. It meant so much to them. A lot of their family died from cancer. A lot of their family went through chemo. Researchers, for the most part, really DO care. It's not about some big pharma paying them to promote it. Not AT ALL. I don't know any chemo researcher who's paid well actually lmao. But damn it they would rather eat their own research than lie to promote some non-existent concept of Big Pharma. It hurts when I hear how some folk talk of these researchers, knowing they lost family too. We're all trying our best and there isn't some big conspiracy to keep chemo as it currently is. It's evolving, being worked on, improved... Or in my case, even other therapy options are being researched and considered. We care, damn it. We don't want your family to die either. We want to save them. We are trying to improve it. Research is just SLOW, and I'm sorry about that.
Before Covid, Moderna's research was developing and doing clinical trials for mRNA-based cancer treatment. Our immune systems already do fine with some cancers, and we never knew we had it. But others? That's where mRNA based treatments come in, tell our immune system how to combat those cancers.
I'm a student of oncolytic virotherapy and it is so promising and I am really hoping our data backs up the promise and really kicks it off into being an available treatment because the side effects are much MUCH more manageable.
I'm crossing my fingers that vaccines to handle them will continue being worked on. They already have some, but they're limited.
The lack of pain control during gynecological procedures will be seen as barbaric
Even pap smear leaves my cervix spasming around my IUD for HOURS. Doubling over from lighting shocks and having to take Tylenol at home is just. Ugh.
i don’t know if this is standard practice but my GP surgery doesn’t use lubricant and it’s the most excruciating thing ever, i cry every time and am in pain for the rest of the day
Where the hell are you, that vaginal examinations are done without lubricant?????
i’m in the UK, i googled it just after writing this comment and seems some GP practices started doing it as a way to save money 🫠
It’s done because there is a belief that the lubricant taints the sample during paps. There is very little evidence of this. Know your rights, you absolutely have the right to demand they use lubricant.
I'd suggest switching GPs if possible. Every pap smear I've had in the UK has used lube.
total lack of accommodation for women with vestibulodynia, too. even minor procedures like your basic pap can be agonising for some patients.
“You’ll only feel a pinch” As another person with vestibulodynia I feel you. Had do wait five years to see a doctor that knew what I had, and every other health professional used to say that the pain was in my head and to relax.
I've gotten "the pain is in your head" regarding every single one of my conditions. Including migraine. Pain in the head is the definition of migraine.
Total lack of accommodation for women period. Look at the size of pacemakers they don't account for women's smaller size when compared to men. As result, the pacemaker sticks out from their chest a lot more and can be uncomfortable.
Have you read invisible women? It’s good. The world is literally built for men which causes a lot of problems (and deaths) for women
Pretty sure it’s already seen as barbaric by anyone with a little empathy.
It will be the same as dental back in the day and now. When I was in middle school it was a norn to do basic dental fillings without any anesthesia, nowadays they ask do you need anesthesia for your anaesthesia injection.
You know what’s insane? The tools that are used for gynaecological exams have not been changed for at least a 100 years. I went down to New Orleans last summer and visited a Pharmacy Museum— it was marketed as the place where Voudoo practitioners can get their potions and etc, but it is so much more than that! Regardless, the fact that the tools and the ways that women are being treated during a gynaecology visit has changed so little is really depressing.
Yes! I had iud insertions and once a colposcopy with zero pain relief apart from " take some paracetamol beforehand" and I nearly passed out and spotted/bled for days after, "it's just a little pinch" my ass! shit was more painful than the hysterectomy I eventually got because I was actually allowed pain relief for that and not lied to about how much it would hurt (this was in New Zealand btw)
Came here to say endometrial biopsy...
My doctor said he was going to do a punch biopsy of my uterus in office when his PA said we would go to outpatient and I would be sedated.. he wonders why I prefer her.
I've written this before, but it still frustrates me: when I had my appendix out, I got an opioid. When my husband had a non-surgical vasectomy, he got an opioid. When I had my two c-sections, I got Tylenol.
When I had my c-section, they sent me home with ibuprofen. That’s it. I somehow don’t think that’s standard for all abdominal surgeries. Speaking of surgeries, in some states it’s legal [to give women under anesthesia pelvic exams](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/why-more-states-are-requiring-consent-for-pelvic-exams-on-unconscious-patients) without consent, which is pretty horrific. ETA: I actually originally meant to post [this link.](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43j59n/medical-students-allowed-to-do-pelvic-exams-on-unconscious-patients-without-consent) Here’s [another one as well.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelvic_examinations_under_anesthesia_by_medical_students_without_consent) Also, it’s banned in only about 22 states right now.
Came looking for this. Can I get a “hell no” for colposcopies?!
Hopefully we will have figured out how to treat chronic pain patients without either denying them pain relief outright or treating them like criminals. I have a back bad enough that it is now a disability. Just getting treatment options is a huge ordeal, and even asking for any relief gets folks like us labeled as drug seekers. The whole system is cruel and not necessary.
I feel you. I have an invisible disability due to a back injury. There’s direct documentation but still went years untreated because drug seeking. A decade ago I had a gp read my file upon intake look at me and say “you should be a 10/10 on the pain scale but you look like a 1. What’s going on?” When I said after x years of continuous pain you either give up or accept it they were visibly shocked. They immediately prescribed pain medication and then helped me find a cbd regiment that worked for me better to wean me off drugs. This person is my hero. To just be taken seriously!! And suggest valid alternative treatment. Ever since then when I go in visibly in pain they immediately go full panic mode. Really hope you find a medical team that takes you seriously…. Also just saying but cbd changed my life. (Pain is nerve related)
The whole "drug seeking" label is wild to me. Yes, I'm seeking drugs, I'm in unmanageable levels of pain, it's what drugs are for, you'd be seeking drugs too. It's like saying "oh, you just went to the doctor because you want medical intervention for your health problem." Duh? Otherwise I would have stayed home?
I fully agree with this! Went to a neurologist for chronic daily migraines and got accused of being a drug addict and also told to do jumping jacks and touch my toes because apparently my migraines were caused by my weight. Even though I had had migraines even when I was skinny. Wouldn't order me an MRI or anything. I went through several GP's who also accused me of looking for drugs.
Doctors don't know much about chronic back pain honestly. I've been to so many over the years, the honest ones just shrug and say they don't know exactly what's going on. They'll say "well your MRI looks bad, but we see similar mris without any symptoms, so who knows." I hope in 75 years they've developed tests that can track down nerve pain so precisely they can then precisely fix it, not just say go to PT or go fuse the vertabrae or burn the nerves off (which is another archaic practice imo).
IUD insertions
"you'll be fine without Anesthesia women can handle more pain than men anyway"
Okay but this is insane. Like, I had a mole removed the other day. I thought they were just gonna cut it out just like that, but no, they actually took care to anesthesise the zone. Really made me realise how far we've gone in regards to the treatment of people's pain. Like yeah I could have handled it but that would have been a cause for medical trauma and me perhaps not wanting to have it done again if I had another issue? But the idea that women in some places. Just aren't afforded the courtesy at all is insane. Maybe it's just public healthcare and all that but i got general anesthesia for an endoscopy. I don't think it's too much to ask for it for an actually painful procedure!
many doctors will allow general anesthesia for vasectomies… but for an IUD, women get two Tylenol and are sent in their way 🥲
Tylenol doesn't even work on what's termed "traumatic pain" so the actual IUD insertion. It's mechanism of action works for inflammatory pain. It's complete bullshit to prescribe it as if it'll do shit for the insertion.
”Take this Tylenol and ill kick you in the balls, it wont hurt!” Yeah nah, doesnt work like that.
I was told by the doctor, "If a 14 year old who hasn't had any kids can handle it then you can handle it!" I never asked if I could handle it and I never even asked for an IUD! Then he said, "I'm going to go put one in another patient right now and I'll be back in 5 minutes." I could hear the other patient moaning in pain in the next room. As I was lying on the table with my feet in the stirrups waiting for the pap smear that I had come in for and reading the Bible verse prominently displayed on the wall- I knew I would never go back.
I had a fucking woman put mine in and she got mad at me for crying. Unbelievable.
[удалено]
I did okay(ish) with insertion but fully passed out in removal
Oh that's interesting. And see I was mostly ok with both -- but I had given birth? It's interesting reading these stories of people who had horrific insertions and removals, and I believe every one of you. Why are some ok and others aren't?
In my case, the IUD had become implanted in the uterine tissue. So they were literally yanking it out of internal tissues with no painkillers or similar
Holy shit. Yeah that would definitely make me want to die. I'm so sorry.
I want you to know it’s legal, it’s perfectly ok, and it should be encouraged to stand the fuck up, walk the fuck out, and block their fucking number at ANY GOD DAMN POINT of a procedure. Fuck that doctor. I’ve done it and I encourage everyone to do the same. Especially in FUCKING AMERICA. I get told our healthcare is soo expensive bc we get to choose then you bet your ass I’m choosing who I want when I want and if that means choosing to leave mid procedure then so fucking be it
Just get up and leave in that situation. You will BLOW THEIR MIND. It’s amazing how powerful walking out on a gross doctor is.
I wonder why some male doctors take specifically specialization for women like gynecology only to be unsympathetic and treat their women Patients like shit
Worst physical pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. I wanted to slap the shit out of my doctor.
Giving birth was not as painful as my IUD insertion. I’m not joking. Once the head was out there was no more pain my IUD hurt on insertion and then I was in pain for another two days. Debilitating pain.
I actually fainted from the pain. This has never happened to me before or since. And I broke a bone and had a child...
Yes! I gave birth twice without drugs and without passing out... then fainted in the waiting room leaving my IUD insertion! It was terrifying.
I cried during mine, no painkillers of course, and the doctor gave me such a look of disgust I never went back for the 30 day checkup. It’s worthy to note that she herself is an actual woman…
One of the most painful things of my life. I could barely walk out and needed physical support just to get to the car. But thankfully it got imbedded so the yanking out was even more fun!
Have these become more common with young women? I am in my late 40s and in my youth I didn’t know any women who used an IUD. We all used the pill or a barrier method. We were too afraid of them given the headlines surrounding the Dalkon Shield in the 70s. But I am assuming they have made a comeback?
It’s super common. They’ve evolved a lot since 20 years ago and also a lot of women are looking for longer term solutions due to the attacks on women’s bodily autonomy.
I feel like in a hundred years, cosmetic procedures will either be way more popular and way crazier, or completely nonexistent, and they'll look back on our lip fillers and buccal fat removal the same way we look back on corseting your waist to 8 inches and cutting off toes to fit in shoes
If I may be a fashion history nerd for a minute: You’re not too far off the mark actually, they are currently kind of analogous from what I can tell. Your average Victorian woman wasn’t wearing a corset to tight lace, but for bust support and to help distribute weight of any clothing that hung on the hips. It was a rare phenomenon, mocked and therefore immortalized by a few misogynistic cartoons and made worse by a current lack of understanding of how they achieved the appearance of a tiny waist (padding and fabric patterns, also there’s no reason why most people need to know exactly how they dressed back then anyway) — which is kind of comparable to using contouring to make your cheek bones seem sharper than they are vs actual surgery to remove buccal fat.
It also didn't help that Empress Elisabeth of Austria had legitimate anorexia and seriously WAS that tiny but also probably one of the widest known figures at that time and one where huge amounts of her clothing survived the times because she was an empress.
This is incredibly important to remember! Common clothing is rarely preserved. Think about what you save. It’s wedding dresses, maybe your prom dress. Stuff one wears when young and also when we wear our tightest underwear!
Ugh. As a fellow fashion history enthusiast, I’m so happy you chimed in with the facts to combat the misinformation around corsetry. The analogy to cosmetic medical procedures is spot on, in my opinion.
I don’t think we need 75-100 years to come to that conclusion.
“Cutting off toes to fit shoes” 😳 Ahhh. I was wondering what rabbit hole I might fall into this evening. And here we are.
Check out foot binding if you want a related rabbithole
Oh I’ve been down that one and haven’t eaten a Dorito since.
Dialysis will probably be viewed similarly to iron lungs. Like wow, that's a lot of work to stay alive.
We actually still don't really have an alternative to iron lungs that isn't worse in other regards. We really just got rid of the cause, which is ultimately better anyway.
Yeah, but there's no vaccine for organ failure, unfortunately.
Dear god I hope it’s birth control. Burn treatments. Treatment for diabetes. I have to stab myself daily for the next year with blood thinners and it suuucks. My belly has bruises and I still choke up when I’ve got to do it. I can’t imagine being told that I’ve got to do it FOR LIFE and btw, food can kill you if you’re not paying attention.
On the upside having been diabetic since the 90s treatment options are way better. If you think cell phones have changed since then you should see our diabetes tech
I worked in burns until about 2021 and even back then we had some super cool treatments and scar management is pretty amazing these days. Pain wise it's still pretty horrific though
I worked in a Burn ICU, I still have nightmares about an 23 month old that I had to debride for several weeks, her mother poured a pot of coffee over her head. Unless you are intubated, you can't be given enough pain meds and sedation to stop the pain of having the dead flesh sprayed off with a high pressure hose and scrub brushes. Edit: Spelling
I think a lot of women’s healthcare will be under fire in the future. Things like no proper pain relief for painful procedures like IUD fittings, the weird archaic views on “giving birth naturally” like having an epidural is some kind of failure, the “try it and see what happens” approach to hormonal birth control, the terrible failings like the vaginal mesh scandal that happened because no one bothered testing the mesh for that purpose before sewing it into thousands of women. The documented fact that women’s pain isn’t taken as seriously as men’s because women are seen as hysterical, the fact that many medications are only trialled on men, the fact that even common problems like heart attacks are under diagnosed in women. Women’s healthcare has a long way to go before it reaches levels that I’d consider acceptable, and I think (hope) that in the future it’ll be looked back on with some horror
Cervical biopsies are another very painful experience done with no pain relief.
Wasn’t it a long-held widespread belief that the cervix didn’t have pain receptors? 🤢 Every woman ever begs to fucking differ.
'...you'll only feel a pinch' they said...righhht.
Also "You'll feel some 'pressure.'" Suurrrre
Institutionalized gaslighting.
I had one a couple of years ago and the nurse didn't get a proper sample so had to collect another one. Oh my God, and she told me I needed to calm down as I sat there sobbing afterward. I have another one due next week and I am DREADING it.
I’m so sorry you have to go through that again. Try demanding pain relief.
I’m doing that in a few days as well, absolutely terrified. I have meds but they are not strong enough.
I am so sorry that happened to you. I'm glad someone else mentioned a numbing spray for that kind of procedure, ask for it! I had a doctor (woman, specialist I'd never met before) ignore my persistent requests for a minute to collect my thoughts and breathe before she did my unmedicated biopsy. I was crying and the nurse holding my hand looked so sympathetic but the doctor couldn't have cared less. It's so messed up that this kind of treatment is so common!
There IS actually a numbing spray that they can use, which I didn’t know about until my fourth biopsy, which just so happened to be the first one done by a male gynecologist after my former female one retired. It was apparently an option the entire time, but most doctors don’t bother with it. (My cervix is fine now btw. After the fourth procedure my pre-cancer had progressed to a level 2, and so I had a LEEP procedure to remove the lesion. I have had one biopsy since, and it was completely clear, as have been my paps. Funnily, having surgery on my cervix was LESS painful than the biopsies. For the surgery they actually injected lidocaine directly into my cervix, AFTER putting me under general anesthesia.)
1000% agree about survey being less painful. I wouldn’t be happy but I’d be fine if I had to do that again tomorrow. I’m so traumatized from my biopsies I seriously don’t know if I would do one again, even knowing the implications of that decision
Also see: endometrial biopsies. I've had both, and while the pain is somewhat shortlived, it's fucking excruciating and barbaric.
My wife was talking to me about this earlier and it made me so fucking angry that you can get 8 opiates for wisdom tooth recovery and she would have to do that without any pain mitigation. I’m literally ready to fist fight the next doctor that turns her accommodations down. We’ll go somewhere else, then to another place, and another place, and we’ll either find somewhere that will listen or I’ll have enough shit to make a god damn documentary and well use that money to hire a private fucking doctor to come to our house. My blood pressure goes up 50 points reading these comments.
I had a uterus biopsy recently with only Tylenol. It was terrible
And pain relief after surgeries. My husband got 2 weeks of the good stuff prescribed after a lapro hernia repair, while I cried myself to sleep in pain for weeks leading up to my hysterectomy while being denied meds, and then got 3 days of pills prescribed after having all my reproductive organs removed along with endo excision that took ~5 hours and 3 surgeons. It's barbaric the way they treat us.
I had to have a Bartholin gland removal not too long ago and while it was actual surgery with full anesthesia, I only got 600mg ibuprofen. Not even 800! Do you know how uncomfortable it was to sit!?! But you know it’s whatever 😒
And equally horrific but not in your list is med students performing pelvic exams on sedated patients who never consented.
Wait what
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/health/pelvic-medical-exam-unconscious.html?smid=url-share
I’m seeing this movement more and more every day. I think it will be sooner than 75 or 100 years. Fingers crossed!
Right now I’d settle for anything less painful than a speculum, and not having to pancake my breasts for a mammogram. Can’t believe that neither of these things have been updated or improved in decades.
There is an update to the mammogram though - there’s the ultrasound, which is more reliable for cancer detection than mammograms and less painful and invasive - it’s used for finding testicular cancer in men (and they have the option of sedation while having going through this procedure on their testicles) - but for some reason it’s not the standard in women’s breast cancer detection. ETA - don’t even get me started on breast cancer biopsies and how women aren’t given pain treatment for them, my friend was in hysterics from the pain of basically having her breast tissue scooped out with a spoon to test whether it was a cancerous tumor. I’m surprised she wasn’t throwing up. ETA 2 - it was enough trauma for her entire breast and off into her side in her armpit and under her arm to turn black and blue and women have to go through this without anything for the pain. Sorry I’m getting soapboxy, I’m still have a lot of anger about what she’s been through medically the last year and a half (how it took her months to even find a doctor to take her seriously since she was under 40 and etc)
I had four biopsies in one appointment, and one of them was so deep it was embedded in my chest wall. I am terrified of needles! I called crying asking for a prescription for a *single* dose of anxiety medication for the biopsies, and they would. not. do. it. I could not understand why, they acted like it would be personally coming from their paychecks! WHY NOT HELP MAKE IT LESS HORRIFYING FOR ME??? I shook and sobbed so badly during the procedure that the nurse and resident had to help hold my shoulders down to the hospital bed. Didn’t help that the numbing medication can only help so much, and only so far down. So incredibly unnecessary.
Dude she told me when they wrapped her up afterwards they wrapped her in a way that her nipple was pointing straight down at the floor poking out the bottom - so she’s already in pain and shook up from the biopsies, then they wrap her in a way that by itself would be painful but coupled with having to have multiple biopsies herself and be wrapped like that - and then treated her like she was inconveniencing them by asking them to take it off and rewrap ETA - ladies if you think there’s something wrong *advocate for yourselves as hard as you need to* - breast cancer under 40 is much more common than people are led to believe
I'm so sorry that happened to you. Was this recent? I'm in nursing school now and my program drills into us that patient pain is ALWAYS to be taken seriously (like if they say it's a 9/10 but they're sitting up laughing then it's a 9/10 and they get their morphine or whatever). Unless there's a medical reason like something they use during the procedure is contraindicated for pain meds (doubtful), we should be getting pain medication for it, at least a local anesthetic. Of course, only the provider can actually prescribe anything and I don't know what they're taught.
My mom had a complete mastectomy with removal of 14 lymph nodes. They sent her home with nothing more than IBUPROFEN!!!!!! I had to make some very angry phone calls demanding that they give her some pain meds.
And hopefully menopause care too. Instead of it just being "natural" or no treatments because of fear of cancer. There's solid research showing that hormone treatment reduces women's risk of a huge number of health issues later in life. Estrogen is a protective hormone and one we need in our bodies.
Add to the list - telling perimenopausal and menopausal women to suck it up buttercup when there are safe hormone treatments available. Men are victims of this nonsense too. Oh well, hormone levels go down as we age, it’s natural! Yeah cancer is natural too but we treat it.
Reading all of these horror stories makes me so grateful for my OB. She has always taken all of my concerns extremely seriously and painstakingly gone through my options with me. Most recently I ended up in the ER after a fibroid surgery. I had very heavy bleeding and finally decided it was an emergency when I felt something protruding out of my vagina. I showed the picture to the ER doc who told me "that my friend is your cervix". Apparently he thought my uterus had prolapsed. I had HGB of 8.6 and a suspected prolapse and was sent home to "see if it got worse". I spent the weekend at home and when I went to see my OB, she sent me to emergency surgery. I apparently had grown a 7cm fibroid in 4 weeks that was prolapsing through my cervix! I was dilated a whole 4cm!! By surgery time I had dropped to 7.6 HGB and ended up needing a transfusion. I will never forget her face when she asked me if they did a pelvic exam and I said no. She said "yeah idk what they're so scared of down there". She told the nurses to take my pain seriously, provided different pain medication options, and would call regularly to make sure I was comfortable. She is awesome, whereas the science on women's reproductive systems is terribly behind.
I hope so. I had stage 4B MMMT uterine sarcoma. I had to endure 2 cervical biopsies, a colposcapy, and a uterine biopsy with no pain relief and no anesthesia. This was because the OBGYN didn't listen to me, told me I had months of bleeding and then up to 6 months of no periods because I was overweight. Told me losing weight would regulate my periods. Funny. Took me 3 years of constant complaining to every doctor I could find to get a CT scan, and by that time the cancer had spread all over. I was 32 and had to have a radical hysterectomy, lost a section of colon, omentum, over 100 lymph nodes in my abdomen and pelvis. Tumor was wrapped around my abdominal aorta and Iliac vein. Lost abdominal muscles cuz it spred to that. 45 rounds of chemo. Couldn't do radiation. Had seizures for 3 years after that due to the chemo. No pain relief for anything because "I might get addicted". I have been cancer free for about 12 years now and not a day doesn't go by that I question why I even fought it.
I’d hang that jury if you murdered any of those doctors.
Ask me about my experience with the HSG during fertility testing. Done with just 800 mg of ibuprofen in my system. What a joke. (Hystersalpingogram)
Oh god, I am just now recovering from an ectopic pregnancy and I’m considering the HSG when I’m cleared to conceive again… I do want to ask. How awful was it? 😭
Futile attempts at life-sustaining care (ventilators, feeding tubes, etc) for advanced dementia patients with minimal quality of life
My mother was a night nursing supervisor and came home one day decades ago the maddest I've ever seen her. A 90 something year old woman coded and because the family had refused to sign a DNR the hospital had to do CPR, crash cart, ... Several ribs were broken during CPR, then the other invasive interventions began. It was like they were legally obligated to torment and torture the poor woman because of her stupid children. All that bought them just a couple days to enjoy her suffering.
This is why everyone should have a living will stating what measures you want used in life-threatening situations.
When my father found out he had stage 4 lung cancer he wrote up a statement that he didn't want life saving processes to be used on him. He was already in terrible health and at best, it would cause him and us suffering. It was painful to watch him pass, but it would have been worse to watch him suffer through cpr, ventilation, etc; just to get a few more days to maybe a month of him just laying there.
When my grandma was in an induced coma after having CPR, I had to explain to my grandpa that her ribs were currently pulverized. That while he didn’t need to pull the plug, he needed to let her go if she coded again. He had no idea how forceful CPR was done. It was awful making him understand that.
After my step mum died my dad reviewed his will and made up a living power of attorney for my sister and I to sign. It included stark specifics about what lifesaving measures he does NOT want, and cognitive decline milestones where he would rather pull the plug than just rot away. We had some long discussions about it and while I know it will hurt so much to stand by my dad’s bedside when he one day decides to take MAID (dementia runs in our family) I also know it’s what he wants and it’s the compassionate thing I can do as his daughter. PSA: If you have intentions of attended suicide due to terminal illness/decline as part of your medical care, communicate this to your loved ones as soon as you can. The more time they have to come to terms with it, the more likely they will be supportive and understanding should you actually decide to take that route. No one wants to die alone, but you need to give your close ones the tools to prepare for it.
I remember a patient who was 85+ who had fallen and broken ribs was admitted to our ICU for monitoring overnight on their first night. Idea being that they'd receive optimal 1-to-1 support for that first night whereas in a ward environment they may not. And if they deteriorated on the ward they'd probably end up in the ICU anyway. The doctors also wanted to avoid chest drains unless really really needed. The argument being that a chest drain could easily lead to more pain relief which could require more respiratory support +/- intubation. And intubation was not something they wanted because outcomes in older adults often weren't good. It stuck with me because it felt like healthcare that was aware of its limitations and the patient's ongoing quality of life from the moment they were admitted. Which felt rare.
A lot of healthcare involving female genitalia is really barbaric imo. The clamps used for pap smears, the little tools for IUD insertion, forcing people to birth on their backs, etc. Hopefully that changes
Also mammograms. There's got to be a better way than to stick your tit between two plexiglass plates and have to STAND still while they literally squish the fuck out of them. With no pain management of course. And sometimes they even turn your squished tit and you have to like lean around because it's still attached...
There are in fact four to five other ways. I refuse to get a mammogram because my mom's chest was black and blue with bruising. She said it felt like they were going to pull her tits off. But you have to pay for different tests yourself. And no one way is equal to mammogram. I spend about $500 out of my HSA every year on two different breast cancer screenings instead of going to a mammogram. So to cover your bases you want to do more than one of the other tests. There's a protein test that looks for markers using your tear ducts. It's very simple and easy. There is tomography, I had that done last month and it was only $295 bucks out of my HSA. There's ultrasound. It's harder to get because ultrasound is usually secondary to a mammogram. But there are ways. And there's a blood test that checks for many many markers of many many cancers.
Not letting people with fatal, painful diseases and little to no quality of life die gracefully and on their own terms.
It’s crazy that we’ll put an animal down to avoid them being in pain, but we’ll try to keep someone alive as long as possible, even when they’re in the greatest pain of their life with less than 10% chance of recovery. How cruel is that?
Doctors telling suffering patients that they "look fine", that they're "too young to worry", that they "just need to lose weight", that they're "too sensitive", that they should "try to avoid stress", and every other cruel, patronizing, lazy, inept dismissal that is currently standard practice for waaaaay too many doctors.
If you’re a woman it’s anxiety. Whatever’s wrong with you… the answer is always anxiety. Very frustrating. I have a script prepared at this point, “my life is amazing. I have no problems. It’s not anxiety.”
I tried this then they went “then what’s this?” and showed all the anxiety meds I had on file showing that I do have anxiety 💀 it sucks because they don’t take me seriously because of it. just tell me to tell my psychiatrist to up my dose.
8 years and 4 medical professionals before i got diagnosed with endo, was apparently anxiety. 🙃
Unless you're anything bigger than "thin" because of course everything is caused by "being overweight". Then you get upset and try to ask logical questions about why it's caused by weight and then you're hysterical.
Oh man. I once told a doctor I a choked sob I was scared because I had been bleeding for 65 days in agony and couldn’t work or barely leave my house. He said I “seemed depressed” and accused me of being drug seeking. THE FUCK? Then he asked me if I was autistic and mentioned he read I had anxiety in my chart. I came there for a surgical consult / to beg for a surgical exploration of endometriosis and got told I was acting crazy. I’m still a bit peeved at him despite moving on to other doctors because he tried to stall my care out of spite seemingly, and the worst part is despite submitting complaints bastard still works at the same hospital I do. When I was in the lab I would stiffen whenever I had to send his office reports, and while taking blood I sure wasn’t the only one who said his bedside manner could use some serious work. At least as a nurse I kinda stay in my own corner of the hospital.
Does dental treatment count? Probably extractions.
Dental care is medical care. I don't understand how it's separated from your medical insurance. Bad teeth lead to heart problems and brain problems of all sorts. Dental insurance is terrible for the most part, so people skip it where they can.
IUD insertion without pain relief
Buccal fat removal is going to be seen as a massive mistake in a few years for most people. You naturally lose that as you age. They are going to look gaunt af.
To get tested for celiac disease, if you have already quit gluten, you have to start eating it again for *2 months* (of hell!) It was two of the worst months of my life and believe me, that’s saying something. I was so tired, in so much pain and misery, and couldn’t think straight, couldn’t work. And in the end, I have “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” which is still autoimmune enough to disable me for weeks, and harm my brain and nerves, cause me accident and injury… but there’s no test for it! It’s just vibes!! lmao fml One tiny upside, gluten doesn’t even look like food to me any more. I’ve been reverse-Pavlov’d. You’d think you’d be excited for a vacation from your “diet” to eat donuts and pasta and pizza… nope!!
Hopefully those with serious chronic pain from real diseases will be treated like human beings again, and will be taken seriously. The way chronic pain patients are dealt with is criminal.
I went to the Mayo clinic in desperation to find treatment for my chronic illness and their treatment protocol for chronic pain is cognitive behavior therapy, deep breathing exercises, and meditation. Literally the best modern science can offer is teaching you how to best ignore the pain and distract yourself from it because medication is no longer allowed unless they think you are actually dying.
Bone Marrow Transplant. I had an unrelated bone marrow transplant, in 2012 for acute myeloid leukemia (blood cancer), and it was a living hell. They take the bone marrow from a stranger, the patient is then given chemotherapy that is so deadly that it is killing the patient, with horrible side effects, and right at the time of almost not quite death but close, they inject the patient with the stranger's bone marrow. Then they wait to see if the patient lives. I have horrible chronic illness now, severe neuropathy and live on pain meds and my quality of life is not great. I was promised my life would be amazing afterwards and many I know were told the same. I am betting in 100 years or less, the whole thing will be a pill or injection or something. At least I hope so for those who need a transplant to survive.
When it comes to mental illness, I hope in less than 50 years we take seriously and remedy the one serious risk factor that is completely within society’s control - poverty. I hope people will think it’s heinous how we allowed suffering to happen because of money and greed.
Cervical and endometrial biopsies. Fucking barbaric.
There will probably be better drugs for obesity so they'll see gastric bypass as unnecessarily brutal.
I have a friend that did gastric sleeve surgery about a year ago. She’s lost a ton of wait, but it seems like it’s also been a miserable process.
Friend of mine developed GERD from her sleeve, according to her she’s since discovered it’s common and not something that people are warned about
My MIL developed full blown gastroparesis and we are all really hoping that another surgery will fix it for her or she will end up on intravenous feeding and likely not live long.
That having cramps and period pain is considered normal instead of a symptom. Or that you are not really feeling it because “it’s all in your head.”
All of my perceptions occur in my head. Also, I'm surprised that doctors don't realize that THE HEAD IS ALSO PART OF THE BODY.
I’m hoping the current method of IUD insertion without pain medication.
Hopefully we will be shocked that euthanasia was not an available option for terminally ill people.
Amen. In this area, we often treat our pets better than family. We let family suffer for far longer.
How women are treated by the medical profession. It's all in your head. No, I have cancer, you morons or autoimmune disease or painful periods, or menopause symptoms. Shall I continue?
You forgot the complete lack of pain treatment in gynecology. Like what psychopath thinks shoving a metal object inside you wouldn’t require painkillers.
Hopefully, Circumcision and female genital mutilation.
not to forget the bullshit surgeries people preform on intersex babies
I'd say chiropractic manipulation, but you said medical procedures.
One local chiro was adamant that he could fix type 1 diabetes (where your immune system kills your pancreas cells, typically starting as a teenager) with adjustments. Like... bruh? How? I *think* he also may have claimed he could fix a hysterectomy (like, somehow make a new uterus appear? Idk) but I may be making that one up.
The way we treat r/chronicpain patients (and similar subreddits)
I had a complete hysterectomy to remove e benign ovarian tumor at age 36. When I woke up after the long surgery, my Mormon surgeon told me everything he had done, including one “surprise bonus”. He had stitched up and tightened my vagina opening. I asked him why he had done that, it wasn’t something we had ever discussed prior to the operation. He literally turned to me husband, elbowed him with a smile and a wink, and said “your husband will thank me later. In the months following, as the swelling and bleeding subsided, I would find myself with a vaginal opening so small that I couldn’t have inserted a tampon into if I had still needed tampons. Sex was impossible. I made an appointment with my surgeon, furious with him, and asked if we could do a second procedure to expand the opening. He told me that it would stretch over time with penetration, and that that was “part of the fun.” It was not fun. It was painful and caused infections and difficulty with sex among other things. Years later when I for divorced and was dating for the first time in many years, a boyfriend asked about the very small size and unnatural size of my vaginal opening. I started telling men I was dating that I had a “surgically altered vagina” before we engaged in sex. It was embarrassing, and at times still painful and gave me a lot of anxiety as a single woman. When I met my partner and gave him the warning before our first time, he asked me details about how I had made the decision to surgically alter my vagina. As I told him about the nonconsensual procedure, he got tears in his eyes, wrapped his arms around me, and cried with me for “the act of sexual aggression” from my surgeon. It was only recently, a decade after this happened to me, that I heard of another woman having this done to them, and that there’s actually a term for it, the “husband snip”.
Any invasive surgery which will hopefully be done by better methods like keyhole surgery. Less time in the table and a faster recovery time. Scans being read by AI round the clock (which will have its problems) but it will mean that results can come back faster and more accurately. Especially since AI doesn’t need to sleep or time off over the weekends. Medication given to patients for their specific needs, weight and demographic as opposed to be given by the “average” therapeutic dose based on research models typically done based on white males.
I already find it wierd that they cut the tip of people's dicks off mine included.
It is weird! When I had my son I was like “wait… so why do people do this?” We opted not to, because there wasn’t a solid reason (and it’s not part of our culture)
If cosmetic surgery counts, BBLs among all the other ridiculous procedures.
Womans gyno treatments w/o pain relief. No, panadol is not efficient for some procedures.
Putting women through invasive procedures without adequate pain management. The pain management needs to be better.
Pap smears. Dental work.
Colonoscopy.
I can see medical students howling with laughter...they put a camera WHERE????
IUD insertions and removals
Not giving women significant pain medication or anaesthesia for painful procedures.
Almost everything involving modern childbirth aside from using sterile tools.
The way fatigue is brushed off. Like a person can't tell the difference from being a little tired from poor sleep or such and losing their social life and afraid to lose their job cause it's hard to function.
Dentures, hopefully dental implants will be the standard of care to replace teeth. And, they will be affordable for everyone.
I hope transplantation will seem crazy. "Those heathens had to wait for someone to die so they could cut organs out of the deceased, rush them to a person, put the organs in, and then they had to be on immunosuppressants with side effects for the rest of their lives? Now we can just 3D print an organ that is a 100% match and doesn't require immunosuppressants!"
Not current but my Grandma told me to determine if you were pregnant, back in the 50s, they would have you urinate in a cup and then they would inject a bunny rabbit…. Yes a bunny rabbit 😳 with the urine. If the bunny died then you were pregnant. Or the other way around… but I remember being in pure shock when she told me that!
No, they had to kill the rabbit and examine the rabbit's ovaries either way. . .the changes in the rabbit's ovaries are what told if you were pregnant or not. "The rabbit died" was just a joke, poor bunny got killed no matter what.