8 years ago
1
How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less Seriously
Early on a Wednesday morning, I heard an anguished cry—then silence. I rushed into the bedroom and watched my wife, Rachel, stumble from the bathroom, doubled over, hugging herself in pain. “Something’s wrong,” she gasped. This scared me. Rachel’s not the type to sound the alarm over every pinch or twinge. She cut her finger badly once, when we lived in Iowa City, and joked all the way to Mercy Hospital as the rag wrapped around...
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About 6 years ago, I completely destroyed my elbow. I broke it in several places. When I went to emergency, I received the same treatment. A doctor quickly walked by, looked at it without even touching me, said some jargon to a passing nurse and kept walking. They then made me stand in a hallway for about 20 minutes, while I watched a group of 5 or 6 nurses just stand and socialize about 10 feet away from me. I tried to be good and quiet, but then out of nowhere I felt super weak and then fainted from the pain. I remember right before I blacked out, seeing one of them look over at me and rush at me. I woke up in a bed on a morphine drip. After about 2 hours, they did the xray and realized what actually happened. But because they waited so long, the orthopedic surgeon had left for the day, and because of our shitty medical laws, that meant I now had to schedule my surgery. The soonest they had was 15 days from the incident.
So they wrapped me up with a bandage and sent me home with 15 days worth of very heavy pain killers. Well, on the day of my surgery, I spent another 10 hours waiting in the hospital. They ran out of time and couldn't see me. It was delayed another 10 days. On try number 2, it was a 16 hour wait before I could see a surgeon. Thankfully he did it, but he did a very poor job. He also didn't fill out my paperwork correctly, so I was literally pushed out the door in a wheelchair, unable to walk from all the drugs, and sent home.
I couldn't bend my arm after for 2 years. They just kept saying "it'll get better, there's nothing we can do." I finally moved to a completely different province and had another surgeon look at it. He said it was a very poor job, and he could fix it. 2 weeks later, I was in and received care that was miles ahead of what I received in the original hospital. I was in the hospital for two days, as it turns out having your elbow rebuilt is even more painful the second time around. But literally as soon as I woke up from my 2nd surgery, I was able to completely bend and turn my elbow again, as if it had never been broken.
This story brought back a lot of resentment I have for the Ontario healthcare system. I completely sympathize for that woman.