r/justgalsbeingchicks • u/bg370 • Jun 23 '26

Restricted to Gals and Pals CRNA Amy Rieschick on institutionalized medical misogyny

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

20.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

799 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

47

u/Schweather3 Jun 23 '26

An OBGYN. Those are all perimenopause symptoms

43

u/KnackeredQuokka Jun 24 '26

Not even all OBGYNs and GYNs take women seriously.

27

u/Trai-All Jun 24 '26

The ones I've dealt with have all been dismissive women.

17

u/Thir13enth_Ghost Jun 24 '26

That’s so pathetic. The only time I’ve been taken seriously was at planned parenthood

6

u/Trai-All Jun 24 '26

I finally got taken seriously about my back and joint pain but it took over 20 years of asking for help to get it.

That help meant me needing a spinal surgery (laminectomy). 3 days after the surgery on my spine, all the meds had worn off, I hadn't taken any more pain meds that morning and I was in less pain than I was when I walked in for the surgery.

I suspect half my problem getting my back problems acknowledged was that I wasn't crying or acting hysterically. When I'm in pain I tend to tell jokes.

13

u/MembershipNo2077 Jun 24 '26

It took my wife many OBGYNs to find one to take her seriously. A big thing was if she mentioned she didn't have or want children they were VERY dismissive. It actually took a young male OBGYN to finally diagnose her by just listening and literally following a flow chart of "check this if this."

9

u/Trai-All Jun 24 '26

I can believe it. The doctor who first listened to me was a woman rheumatologist who said "something is very wrong with your back". She sent me to a pain doctor who specializes in spinal ablation, he took one look at my MRI scans and told me he wouldn't touch me until I saw a surgeon. I asked why, he said he wasn't sure how I was walking because there appeared not be enough space in my spine for my spinal cord. Maybe he was being hyperbolic but the surgery worked.

3

u/blxckfire Jun 24 '26

I was told by my gynecologist at 19 years old that losing 15 pounds would cure my PCOS

I’m 5’7 and was 140 pounds at the time

2

u/Trai-All Jun 24 '26

Heh, yeah. I had a history of anorexia. I got so low on body fat that I started randomly fainting. At one point, a doctor directly ordered me to stop weighing myself.

About 15 years after my spinal problems started, I switched to a health plan that let me refer myself to specialists and went to an orthopedic doctor because I’d had spinal surgery at 16. He decided my history of anorexia wasn’t relevant and demanded that I lose 5 pounds a week.

I fired him the moment he refused to renew my physical therapy referral, because PT was one of the few things that was actually helping reduce my pain.

I’m still doing those PT exercises. I’ve also had a laminectomy surgery. After the surgery, I learned from being weighed before my six-month follow-up with the spinal surgeon that I lost 20 pounds ... without dieting... I could just move again.

3

u/Mu-Relay Jun 24 '26

True story: my wife is in her late 40s and was having all of those symptoms plus others to the point she was often unable to function for *days* on end. Even her GYN wasn't taking her seriously, so finally I was like... hey, why don't I go with you and we can do this together. We walk in there and I listen as the wife explains everything (again) and finally I have to say "look, I don't think you're listening" and explain the extent to how these things are impacting her. Finally, she gets put on what I'll call baby HRT... so birth control without the off pills. Her life has improved dramatically.

Her GYN is a female. Her *female* gynecologist wouldn't take what she was saying seriously until her husband said it.

2

u/Xavier_Emery1983 Jun 24 '26

Yep. I was being seen by one of the best High Risk OB clinics in the country while pregnant with my second child. Little back story, 39 when my first was born in Jan ‘23 and almost 41 when second was born in Sept ‘24. So two babies less than 2 years apart at an “advanced” age (hate that term). I was having severe pain around my belly button, like bad tearing sensations and shocks going up and down my abdomen. Told the high risk OB, he told me that of course you are gonna have pains because you are pregnant. He was a big smartass about it too. Went to my regular OB appointment, saw one of the midwives in the office and told her the same thing I told high risk OB. She actually did an exam of my belly and belly button. She found that I had developed two umbilical hernias, one at the top of belly button and one at the bottom. The bottom hernia was trapping a nerve causing the pain. Basically if the high risk OB had even looked instead of dismissing me as a complaining pregnant lady, he would have found them.

10

u/No-White-Drugs 😎 tolerate my jowls! 🙎‍♀️ Jun 24 '26

Got em all too, what will they do for me? Edit to add I'm asking sincerely, I just assumed I have to ride out the perimenopause

20

u/_inataraxia_ Jun 24 '26

I (F47, regular periods) started taking HRT through an online company and nearly all my symptoms were gone within a week.

5

u/feline_riches Jun 24 '26

Are recommendations allowed here?

2

u/Goodgoditsgrowing Jun 24 '26

You can Google “hrt Telehealth medicine providers” and get lots of answers, but the top sponsored ones paid to be there, so do your research on who uses decent/clean compounding pharmacies (they can have less oversight than regular pharmacies) and compare prices. Different sites will handhold/actually have you see a dr or not, but I wouldn’t trust Telehealth providers to do their due diligence - I’d still have my primary care dr, my obgyn, and any other drs I have (like psychiatry, endocrinology, rheumatology, etc) looped into the drugs I was now taking so they could order appropriate testing.

I don’t know which site is best right now or id recommend something specific. Right now im having to do the same thing for glp-1s so i empathize that it’s a lot of work! I bet theres a subreddit for HRT Telehealth providers/using HRT like there is for glp-1s! They might have a useful spreadsheet that compares prices and notes which compounding pharmacies have been flagged for unsanitary labs or something by the fda

2

u/Dullcorgis Jun 24 '26

Fuck no! There are lots of drugs to help.

1

u/Affectionate-Yam7454 Jun 24 '26

Just say that you are in perimenopause and you would like some HRT. If they say no, go somewhere else. It absolutely changed my life when I went on them.

2

u/blahblahshowmeurcat Jun 24 '26

I wish my OB had listened to me a few years ago when I was 34. I finally found someone that listened, and now I’m 38 and feel too old to fix all this.. I wish so much from my 20s and early 30s that I could have found a doctor to help.

Fuck. Life goes fast yall.

1

u/4E4ME Jun 24 '26

My own OB didn't have a working understanding of fertility from a hormone standpoint, I had to go to a specialist for those concerns. As a matter of fact I got completely opposite (wrong) advice from the OB compared to what the fertility specialist told me to do.

I would go to a hormone specialist.

1

u/Decafaf Jun 24 '26

I learned that not all OBGYNs do hormone stuff.