Thread by @uberbarrensclub

Great article highlighting the barbaric practice of women being subjected to invasive & painful hysterocopies (that's filling the uterus with saline, sticking a camera into the uterus) without anaesthetic or pain relief in the NHS broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/…

I’ve had two hysteroscopies, both related to my miscarriages, both thankfully done under general anaesthetic. I was also given a local when I had a cervical punch biopsy, & gritted my teeth when I had multiple endometrial biopsies. None were fun, but thankfully not excruciating

The NHS is supposed to offer women having a hysteroscopy a choice of local or general anaesthetic, but there’s no requirement for them to do so. And many women aren’t even offered a paracetamol.

More than that, women aren’t even warned it might be painful. @Jessicafurseth describes different patient leaflets that compare hysteroscopies to period pain, or make vague references to “discomfort”, with no mention of pain relief.

We see this all the time with miscarriages: women are sent home & told to expect some bleeding & period-like pain. Not that it can feel like early labour w/ contractions. Or that they might haemorrhage. Or that they might pass a pregnancy sac.
medium.com/ask-me-about-m…

@HysteroscopyA have campaigned tirelessly against painful hysteroscopy for years “We strongly believe that more information needs to be available to women to enable them to make decisions about their mode of treatment before and during the procedure.”
hysteroscopyaction.org.uk

No one would expect a dentist to remove a tooth without giving you a local. But women are routinely given NO choice in how an invasive, intimate and potentially painful procedure is carried out.

Cost plays a part, as NHS Hospital Trusts are currently financially incentivised to perform at least 70% of hysteroscopies in outpatients rather than under general anaesthetic.

But the medical profession has long dismissed or downplayed women’s sexual & reproductive health concerns. Women’s healthcare gaslighting is real, and it’s big fucking deal.
theatlantic.com/family/archive…

(If you're not familiar with the term, gaslighting happens when one person tries to convince another to second-guess their instincts and doubt their perception that something is real.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighti…

The term comes from a 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film wants to get his hands on her jewellery. He realises he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and committed to a mental institution.

huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat…

To pull off this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker on and off, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things.

Medical gaslighting happens when health-care professionals downplay or blow off symptoms you know you're feeling and instead try to convince you they're caused by something else—or even that you're imagining them.

health.com/mind-body/is-y…

Maya Dusenbery’s book, "Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick," explains how women’s health issues have historically been dismissed

broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/…

"In 2009, my doctor told me that, like “a lot of women”, I was paying too much attention to my body. Saying there wasn’t an issue, he suggested I just relax and try to ignore the symptoms." (It took 10 years for her heart condition to be diagnosed) bbc.com/future/story/2…

Endometriosis is one of the most common gynae conditions, affects 1 in 10 women of reproductive age - & it takes an average of 7.5 years to be diagnosed after symptoms begin to present

My biggest fear in the world is being told that nothing is wrong with me. If nothing is physically wrong, then that means the pain I have experienced over the last decade is a figment of my imagination & that is just too overwhelming to bear thinking about stylist.co.uk/long-reads/end…

Abby Norman, author of 'Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women's Pain" was told by several Drs her endometriosis was just a UTI: it was only taken seriously when her boyfriend came to an appointment.

hachettebookgroup.com/titles/abby-no…

Norman repeatedly told doctors that sex ached “like a dull pinch, that resonated to my pelvis.” No one paid attention until her boyfriend mentioned his frustration. “Becoming a disappointment to a man,” she writes, “seemed to do the trick.” nytimes.com/2018/03/19/boo…

John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London, revealed that patients have described menstrual cramps as “almost as bad as having a heart attack.”

qz.com/611774/period-…

“Men don’t get it and it hasn’t been given the centrality it should have. I do believe it’s something that should be taken care of, like anything else in medicine,” says Guillebaud.

independent.co.uk/voices/period-…

No shit sherlock. Women have known this for years. Drs wouldn't listen.

twitter.com/i/moments/9688…

Men wait an average of 49 minutes before being treated for abdominal pain. For women, the wait is 65 minutes for the same symptoms. Women are seen as exaggerating pain and being ‘dramatic’, while men are listened to & believed.

independent.co.uk/life-style/hea…

Women with chronic pain conditions are more likely to be wrongly diagnosed with mental health conditions than men and prescribed psychotropic drugs, as doctors dismiss their symptoms as hysteria

digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewconten…

The authors of a 2001 analysis of gender bias in clinical pain management, 'The Girl Who Cried Pain' attributed this to “a long history within our culture of regarding women’s reasoning capacity as limited” (thread part 2 to follow)

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Thread part 2 here:

https://twitter.com/uberbarrensclub/status/1087007376341749761