Bias In Medicine: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

A year ago I had really bad abdominal pain. The nurses asked me like 30 times if I was sure I wasn’t pregnant as my pain reminded them of labour pain. The doctor asked me if I was on my period. I told him no (it wasn’t about to start for another week). He dismissed my pain and told me that it was just my uterus preparing for my period. One of his assistants (a male medical student) asked if he could do an echo for training purposes and because he wanted to look more into it. This medical student took me seriously and found out that my intestines formed abnormally, they are to bendy and have spots where water can stay behind. My cramps where the result of my body wanting to expel the water.
So thank you medical student. 🙏

Edit: With echo I mean ultrasound. Thanks everyone for bringing that to my attention. English isn’t my first language and in my first language an ‘echo’ refers to an ultrasound.

Real talk tho, as a women w chronic pain, if a doctor refuses to run tests for whatever the problem is, request that they write in your file the date you requested the tests, his refusal, and then ask for a copy. Watch how fast their tune changes when there's documentation

When my gallbladder ruptured, I drove myself to the hospital, while vomiting blood, and was told that it was constipation and to go home. The attending said that I was being a crybaby.

I started experiencing intermittent chest pains in the end of 2016, and went to the Drs one night to have them tell me it was probably due to anxiety or stress, and at the most it was costochondritis (an inflammation of the cartilage in your chest). They said to just relax. A few months later, the chest pains got more regular and I started developing breathing problems. Back to the doctor, this one said that it was probably costo (not that they’d done any tests to confirm) and suggested I take up swimming because it’s great for stretching out your muscles. Over the next couple of months, I went back to the doctors three or four times, one suggested asthma, others kept saying anxiety (despite my mother being a clinical psychologist and thus would have recognised anxiety). Then it got to the point where I could barely talk for more than 30 seconds and my partner couldn’t hug me without causing a coughing fit. I had lost heaps of weight and was regularly experiencing night sweats and other symptoms but just kept shrugging them off because I didn’t want yet another doctor to insinuate I was a hypochondriac. One week it got so bad that I took myself to the emergency room. After a simple chest x-ray, they found a giant tumour in my chest that was taking up where my left lung should have been and pressing on my heart. Three days later, they diagnosed me with Hodgkin lymphoma. That was about six months after that first doctor’s visit. Would have been nice to be taken seriously the first time I went. Luckily all good now but still pretty pissed about all of doctors I saw previously. Just adding my story to the growing collection of people not being taken seriously by doctors.

"My girlfriend missed her curse and told me the Happening is happening. I'm not ready to raise the Babadook."

That poor man lost his wife and he's tortured by whether she might still be alive if only he had lost his temper with medical staff. That's absolutely heartbreaking.

When I was 8 years old I was having severe abdominal pain, a fever, and I had vomitted (only once) for about a day. My mom worked in a hospital for many years at the front desk, so she had no medical degree but she picked up a lot of information over the years. She took me in at 2 am because I was just getting worse (she had to carry me in because I was in too much pain to walk). She told the male doctor my symptoms and what she thought was happening..... Appendicitis. He refused to take any blood tests on me or whatever they do to test my appendix, and told her she was just an over protective mother and all I had was the flu so she was to just take me home. My was furious and stood up for me. He finally agreed to do some tests. When they came back he was really concerned because they didn't look good. Yep, I had appendicitis. Surgeon said that it had been leaking and I was only a few hours away from it rupturing. I can only imagine what would have happened if my mom had just listened to the doctor

When I was 4, I couldn’t eat, drink, or talk. My mom was obviously terrified, took me to the doctor because she knew it was my tonsils. Me doctor said it was an ear infection. She tried to fight it, but he wouldn’t let up. Eventually she took me to a different doctor, who instantly checked my tonsils, and saw they were the size of ping pong balls. I had surgery that day. She ended up becoming my primary, and my family was super bummed when she moved to a different state a decade later. Dr. Opal was the best and most compassionate doctor I had as a kid. My primary now is amazing though, she gets me any test I need, and sometimes will consult over the phone for advice/a question because then I don’t have to pay hospital fees.

Also worth noting the bias against poor people in medicine. I've lived in a pretty poor area, and they think everyone here are junkies and addicts. My mom went to a clinic with paperwork from a rheumatologist saying that she has A.S. They couldn't refuse to treat her, but they drove her to tears, and one doctor actually asked her if she was just there for drugs. She didn't go back.
So, no. Not all broke people are addicts. We need fair medical treatment too.

I love that John Oliver does so many pieces about problems that don't affect him personally. It gives me hope.

"Bring a White Man" is actually legit good advice for this situation.

A good example of bias in medecine, though unrelated to gender or race, is a doctor who asked me on my first visit if I was smoking, drinking alcohol or doing drugs. When I answered no to him, he looked at me and told me "sure, I believe you" with a very condescend tone. All of this because I was a college student. I never came to his office again.

My wife is black and I'm white. Having me come along with her just so the doctors take her seriously is literally a thing we have to deal with firsthand.

The older I get the more I find out just how odd our country is. We seem to spend more time telling everyone how great we are rather than actually helping the people who live here.

This kind of thing happens in mental health too. Young girls are far less likely to get diagnosed with autism then boys are because a lot of what autism portrays as are also female stereo types. It wasn't until I was 20 years old that I got diagnosed with autism and ADHD even though I got a 'maybe' when I was a kid for ADHD but it all went untreated until I was struggling through college on a social level.

My horror story started when I was about 12/13 years old. Went to the doc for a normal check-up and my pulse was a bit high. The nurse asked me if I was nervous about something and I didn't think I was, so I told her so. She insisted I had to be nervous because my pulse shouldn't have been that high. So I literally had to wrack my brain for something I was maybe nervous about and didn't realize I was nervous about. No further questioning done. I was just a nervous 12/13 year old girl.
Couple years later at another doctor check-up, when I was about 16/17 years old, the nurse noticed I had a higher than normal pulse. She asked if I was okay, if I was experiencing any pain anywhere. I said no, but sometimes I felt a bit faint if I stood up too fast and that I couldn't handle the heat. She asked me to go into more detail, so I did. I explained how when my dad or brother or stepmom could be outside in the heat for hours at a time no problem, I felt I couldn't last more than 30 minutes before needing to go inside. I explained sometimes it felt like my heart was fluttering when I moved too quickly and that I couldn't get a proper breath in. She relayed this to the doctor, who promptly told my father that I was being a hypochondriac and trying to get out of manual labor around the house by being lazy. This lead to multiple screaming matches with my dad when trying to get me to do manual labor outside and my refusal do work more than 30 minute stints before taking breaks because I felt like I would faint. His argument was always "The doctor said there is literally nothing wrong with you."
When I moved from down south up north after graduation to live with my aunt and uncle, my aunt asked me to be her volunteer at her medical school (She needed a volunteer to practice blood work and other injections on) and I agreed. Both she and her teacher noticed my extremely high pulse (Because at this point the problem continued to escalate). Both discussed how odd that was and I just said "I've always had a high pulse." My aunt urged me to see a doctor, but I refused because my experience with doctors was always "There's nothing wrong with you." A year later when she started working in a medical office, I finally agreed to see the Nurse Practitioner because my aunt had told me stories on how this woman was a fantastic NP and she would at the least run some basic tests. My aunt expressed that she wouldn't stop pushing until testing proved nothing was wrong.
I went to see the NP and the NP did an EKG my first visit. According to the EKG, I had an enlarged heart. She printed me out a copy of the EKG upon my request and immediately referred me for blood work. While I was waiting in line to get my blood drawn, I texted a picture of the EKG to my dad that said "Welp, I guess something was wrong lol." I think I was in shock and trying to find humor in the situation. My dad immediately called me and asked what he was looking at. I explained what the NP said and what the EKG showed and he started apologizing to me. He sounded like he was on the brink of tears. I was confused because it wasn't his fault, he's not a medical professional. He's a nuclear engineer. A doctor told him consistently that there was nothing medically wrong with me. That I was just trying to get out of working around the house.
Thankfully, the blood work results showed that it wasn't an enlarged heart. I had hyperthyroidism, more specifically, Graves Disease. Now, there are multiple ways to treat this. A) Medication. B) Single injection of radioactive iodine. C) Surgery. The specialist I saw wanted me to take option B. I explained to said specialist that option B was not an option for me because I am highly allergic to iodine. I go into anaphylactic shock when I am exposed to iodine. (For those who don't know, that means the throat swells and I can't breathe). He was frustrated that I didn't even want to consider that a solution, but grudgingly decided to put me on medication instead. I was placed on a beta-blocker and a thyroid medication. Well, every time I took the beta-blocker I felt like my chest was burning and going to explode. It hurt, severely. I reported this to him and he refused to changed the medication. The NP, who had become my primary care physician, told me to stop taking the medication if it hurt that badly because that is a sign that the body is rejecting the medication. So I did and the specialist was suddenly unable to assist me further because "I refused his medical treatment and advise." My PCP gave me a choice: Try a different specialist or she would prescribe what she could. I chose to just let her handle my prescriptions because frankly, the specialist only furthered my own personal bias against the medical industry as a whole. This Nurse Practioner had become, in my eyes, the only trust-worthy medical professional who could help. The only one (My aunt obviously excluded) who took me seriously. At this point I was 20. I had so many tests done. I had a stress test, which I couldn't fully complete because they had to take me off the treadmill at two minutes due to my heart rate spiking up to 200 bpm (These are heart attack levels). I had multiple MRIs done. And all the while my PCP and I were playing a game of medication because my body would get used to the medication I was on and my bpm would spike again. She would raise the medication dosage, it would work for a bit, so she'd try to lower it slightly to find that sweet spot, my bpm would jump to worse than previously, so she'd raise it again. She kept insisting I needed to see a specialist, but I always responded with "I don't trust them with my body." I was going to the ER regularly because I was told that I needed to take each and every aspect of chest pain lasting longer than five minutes as a potential heart attack due to my high bpm.
Then the worst thing happened. My PCP moved to a different field of medicine and couldn't see me anymore. She recommended other docs who could help me, but I was skeptical. I didn't want a new PCP, I didn't trust anyone else. My aunt started working with the new doctor who had replaced her and my aunt asked me to give him a try, because at the very least I needed someone to prescribe my medication. (Actually, the convo went more like "You're going to see him for your meds or you will die of a heart attack [Insert my full name here].") So I saw him and, to my surprise, he took my 22 years old self seriously. He told me that he looked through my chart and saw the issues I had with the specialist. He'd taken the time before I even walked in that office to go over ALL my files so he was up-to-date, as he was the "new person in this medical struggle and needed to do the proper homework." He told me, flat-faced, I needed surgery. The medication wasn't cutting it and I couldn't do the iodine treatment. He explained to me that he couldn't refer me to a general surgeon because he wasn't a specialist. A specialist had to do that. So he took the time to find a well-liked female specialist that wouldn't be too out of the way for me. He did all this... BEFORE I EVEN MET HIM. I was blown away by how in-depth and seriously he took me. So I saw the specialist and she agreed with him. I needed surgery. She referred me to a general surgeon she said she worked with numerous times before. She also told me that I needed to stop any form of drinking (Not that I was an alcoholic, but I enjoyed a glass or two of wine every now and then). She also advised that I quit smoking. I managed to stop the drinking, but smoking was proving to be a struggle.
So I saw the surgeon and when the nurse took my levels, she asked me if I took the stairs. I said no, I had parked on the correct level so I didn't have to take the stairs. When I asked why, she silently showed me my bpm. 199 bpm. Let that sink in. At 22 years of age, my resting heart rate was 199 bpm. She then calmly stated that if I had taken the stairs, I likely would not have made it into the office. I instead would've been sent downstairs to the ER for a heart attack. I think it was her way of making sure I knew how serious this was. Apparently, my old prescription of meds wasn't working anymore. The surgeon saw me and was nervous about the surgery because it was a risk, a lot could go wrong. Usually, they place patients on iodine pills to lessen the risk of complications, but I have that pesky allergy. We scheduled the surgery and after a few more hiccups (Including one where I almost didn't get the surgery due to complications that would've delayed the surgery until after I was 23, lost my insurance, and couldn't pay for it) I finally did get surgery. My thyroid fully removed. He said my thyroid was actually stuck to my vocal chords, so it took a bit longer than expected as he had to pry my thyroid off my vocal chords without permanent damage. I don't know how he managed it, but other than my voice being a hiccup higher now, everything went as smoothly as possible.
I tell this story like this because I was showing symptoms of hyperthyroidism at the age of fucking TWELVE and NO ONE took me seriously. I started showing advanced symptoms around the age of SIXTEEN and no one took me seriously. If my aunt hadn't pushed me to see someone, I would likely not be alive today. It only got so bad because it took me until I was NINETEEN for someone to do even the most basic of testing.

TL;DR The American medical industry is fucking jacked up beyond belief that they would rather call a child a nervous hypochondriac rather than take the time, money, and effort to double-check whether or not she's telling a story for attention or if there really is something wrong. They'd rather a young woman die than be proven wrong. And it's sickening.

A professor taught me that if you listen, the patient will tell you what is wrong with them. I tell my students the same and to always keep an open mind when you step into a patient's room and treat them like you would want to be treated yourself. Thankfully this approach has always served me well.

I have stage 4 endometriosis.
I was having a particularly hard time with pain and knew there was something wrong. I called my gyn (who had already preformed 3 surgeries on me) I'll never forget his advice. "If you have to go to the hospital. Dont tell them it's a uturus issue. Just tell them you have stomach pain. Once they get you into a room, then tell them its endo related. You'll be seen sooner if they think its possibly the flu"

I went to the hospital every day for a week. They refused to do anything meaningful at all. Not even an ultrasound. My gyn had to come in to do an ultrasound himself at 2am.
Turns out my ovary was twisted and I was rushed into emergency surgery then and there.

But even in the prep room, the surgeon was rude, told me I didn't look like I needed emergency surgery.
I told him "make that decision when you see my insides"

I'm a heavier white woman. I went to the doctor a couple years ago because I was going to class, coming home, taking a nap, waking up long enough to eat and MAYBE do homework and then going to bed and sleeping through my first class, every day (I ended up getting taught my morning class by a friend rather than attending it bc I physically could not wake up for it). I was sleeping up to 18 hours a day.

I told them about my mothers entire side of the family (my mom, her mom, my aunt, my uncle, all of them) having thyroid problems, and was made to feel stupid for asking to get my thyroid levels tested.

They told me it might be a mold allergy, but didn't even attempt to test for that. They said me it might be depression, and ignored that I've been depressed since 14/15, the over-sleeping had been happening for about 3 months. They also didn't try to refer me to a therapist at all, just 'maybe depression'.

They ran the tests I insisted on, and then basically sent me a notice saying I was fine (I fucking wasn't). I didn't bother going back.

Luckily the problem went away eventually and I was back to my standard 6-8 hours of sleep. I try to believe the mono test was a false negative, just so I have an answer, but I really have no idea.

Going to the doctor should result in answers, not exhaustion because no one will listen

I started my period at 14, and immediately it was extremely heavy, I had terrible cramps, awful mood swings, and they lasted for over a week (the average period lasts 3-5 days). I thought that maybe it was just because it was the first one, and sometimes they can be heavier. But no, they just kept being like that, and lasting anywhere from 7-12 days with all of the same symptoms. I had to change my tampon every hour or so, and I would still bleed onto chairs at school. It was a mess. I finally went on birth control to try and regulate them, but they were still pretty bad, so I went on continuous birth control so I don’t get them at all, and that changed my life.

But from the beginning I was just told by my mom that “yeah, this is how bad my periods were too” and same for her mom, my sister, and my dad’s mom. We all just accepted it because we were told by doctors that our periods are just bad and that’s that. I only found out last year, when I started seeing a different gynecologist, that the reason they’re so severe is because I have a bleeding disorder, Von Willebrand disease, and PMDD (though we had known that part before seeing this new gynecologist). Literally no other doctor besides this one had thought to run tests on me even though my periods were very abnormal and indicated further health problems. In fact, most women with Von Willebrand disease don’t find out they have it until they start having periods which are almost always very severe. Luckily, the best treatment for it is birth control, which I was coincidentally already on. Birth control already comes with the risk of blood clots, because it raises your Von Willebrand factor in your blood, which is coincidentally the factor I don’t have enough of. But it’s still baffling to me that no one ever thought to try and figure out the cause of the terrible periods that literally every woman in my family had, because it’s just assumed that periods suck and you have to deal with it.