5 min read
mood: frustrated
🏥
Playing Catch-Up
Medicine has been playing catch-up since the day it started. And I do not mean that as some philosophical take. I mean it literally. The history of medicine is a history of mislabeling things, getting it wrong, correcting the record, and then getting it wrong again in a new way. We went from calling mental illness demonic possession to lobotomizing people to pumping them full of pills we barely understood. Progress. Sort of.
And the thing is, it is not just history. It is happening right now. To real people. To me.
And the thing is, it is not just history. It is happening right now. To real people. To me.
📋 The Beginning
📋
The Beginning
I was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. My mom did not know until they handed me to her. No warning. No preparation. Just here is your baby and something is wrong. That was the start of my relationship with the medical field. A surprise no one saw coming even though they had months of appointments to catch it.
Then a doctor in Mexico lied to my mom. Told her he was a specialist in my condition. He was not. And my mom trusted him because that is what you do when a doctor tells you they can help your kid. You trust them. You do not have a choice. You are desperate and scared and they are the ones with the degree on the wall.
Then a doctor in Mexico lied to my mom. Told her he was a specialist in my condition. He was not. And my mom trusted him because that is what you do when a doctor tells you they can help your kid. You trust them. You do not have a choice. You are desperate and scared and they are the ones with the degree on the wall.
🔄 Three Different Answers
🔄
Three Different Answers
But it did not stop there. When I got older I went to a gynecologist and was told I had no ovaries. Basically nothing down there. Then another visit and suddenly I had half. Then another one and apparently I had everything, just smaller than normal. Three different answers from people who are supposed to know. And then at 20, a doctor casually told me I should just have it all removed because I might get cancer when I am older.
I called my mom crying. Not because of the diagnosis. Because it felt like my entire life was a joke to these people. Like they were just guessing and I was the one paying the price for every wrong answer. I could not trust anyone. I still struggle with it. Now I take whatever one doctor tells me and I go get two more opinions. And even then I sit there questioning all three.
That is what this does to you. It does not just mess with your health. It messes with your ability to trust the people who are supposed to protect it.
I called my mom crying. Not because of the diagnosis. Because it felt like my entire life was a joke to these people. Like they were just guessing and I was the one paying the price for every wrong answer. I could not trust anyone. I still struggle with it. Now I take whatever one doctor tells me and I go get two more opinions. And even then I sit there questioning all three.
That is what this does to you. It does not just mess with your health. It messes with your ability to trust the people who are supposed to protect it.
""The Bigger Problem
And here is the part that makes it worse. This is not just my story. This is what a lot of women go through. We get labeled as over-complicated. Over-sensitive. We complain too much. And once that label sticks, it gives doctors permission to not take us seriously. To rush through appointments. To guess instead of dig deeper. To walk all over us because we have already been dismissed before we even open our mouths.
Medicine has come a long way. I am not denying that. But the system still fails the people it is supposed to serve. And it fails women at a rate that should make everyone uncomfortable. The tools are better. The technology is better. But the listening has not caught up. And until it does, people like me are going to keep falling through the cracks while being told it is all in our heads.