THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9409300435
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: YOUR TURN
SOURCE: BY PATTY LaROSSA, SPECIAL TO HAMPON ROADS WOMAN
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
WHEN WILL American doctors learn how to treat female patients? My experience as a patient has not been a good one. I am convinced that though some people may have the medical knowledge to be a good doctor, they may not necessarily have enlightenment to be a good doctor for a woman. I'm not suggesting that women patients are different - just that they are treated differently.
The injustices I am speaking of are patronization and omission. I had endometriosis for eight years. As the disease became more and more severe, other problems began - multiple miscarriages, cysts, adhesions, tumors. It took several surgeries and three doctors before I found relief.
Relief came in the form of a hysterectomy.
``Oh, my god - a hysterectomy,'' you may say. But this is a good thing, even at my young age of 34. Only two weeks after the surgery, I now am in less pain than I have been in eight years. I finally found a compassionate doctor who listened to me when I told him how long I had been in pain. He didn't spend just a minute with me and then wave his hand on the way out, saying, ``Just give it time. You'll be all right.''
This doctor took the stance that:
1) women are smart enough to know when they are really ill.
2) women aren't going to the doctor because it's the only place they can get attention.
3) the majority of women, like men, aren't hypochondriacs. He listened to me, asked questions, looked over my records, ran tests and said I had suffered enough.
Three weeks after my surgery, he impressed me all over again. From his office, I unexpectedly received a packet about an inch thick through the mail. I opened it to find my medical records from the past five years when I was under the care of two previous physicians. Without my request, they had made me copies and sent them to me.
I read them, and for the first time, I saw and understood just how sick I had really been. Most of my internal conditions that the doctors saw during my previous surgeries were never told to me. I was always told, ``You'll get better now.'' One doctor told me that ``women worry too much and worrying makes them sicker than they really are.'' When asked if taking hormones would help my symptoms, one doctor replied, ``Hormones will just make you fat.''
Now I understand why I have been living with constant pain. The records explained so much that I had never known and would never have known had it been left up to doctors who keep information from their patients. Their omission of the facts did not heal me - it only made me question myself.
Ladies, listen to me. The women of the '90s are smart. Arm yourself. Read up. Know enough to ask questions - pertinent questions that allow no hedging. If you're like me, you can live better with knowledge than you can by wondering and worrying.
Don't let your doctor get away with patronizing you and not telling you everything you feel you need to know. If you don't feel you're getting enough answers or if your doctor doesn't quite look you in the eye, do the sensible thing. Don't get upset. He'll just write that as ``hormones.'' Strike where it hurts - the pocketbook. Change doctors. Keep looking until you find the doctor who knows how to treat a female patient with as much concern as the male patient.
Be wiser than I was. Don't live a life filled with pain and sickness and not understanding why. Stand up for your rights. Don't put up with patronization and omission. Find yourself the doctor you deserve. Find one who will not tell you to ``get a life,'' but one who will help save your life.
- MEMO: Patty LaRossa is a resident of Chesapeake. by CNB