– Hello, Susana? The number was for hospital PABX-type extensions. The ones I learned to fear since, on the day of my cancer diagnosis, five years ago, my phone accumulated 8,599 similar calls, a harbinger of the before-after.
I immediately connected the dots: my oncologist. My heart leaping. Her voice, peculiarly honey-sweet. Something extraordinary, considering her usual Clinica Arretada Fria persona Stay-Happy-That-You’re-Alive.
“I’m calling to say that I’ve already uploaded your new medical report to [plataforma de saúde pública española]🇧🇷
A few days before that phone call, I had published in Sheet an article about sexism in the doctor’s office, building on a recent heated argument with the aforementioned that ended, errm, pretty badly.
And now. I need to vent, I thought.
But, before I could say anything, she added, hyperglycemic:
– And I wanted to apologize to you.
Well, what a surprise, but no.
“I spent the whole weekend thinking about it,” he said. I didn’t do it right, and you’re right: the report could have been better written, and I could have been more empathetic to you and your symptoms.
It was like being rescued from a cloud of lead.
I thanked her for calling. For retracting and showing solidarity with me. I made a mea culpa for being aggressive in the way I addressed my dissatisfaction, so was she. End.
Peace made with the oncologist, the background to the story unfortunately remains. The reason for our discussion had to do with stereotypes surrounding women’s health. Whose most emblematic phrases could be:
– Are you in those days?
– It’s all in your head!
– Stop making drama. Etc.
In summary, the doctor treated the side effects of an oncological treatment as my freshness, a biological and therefore inexorable process of Being-Woman. That, and the aggravating factor of her being a woman like me, made me climb into the fruit crate with revolt. I exaggerated the tone of the conversation and we ended up fighting. But was I exaggerating my point of view?
In an interview with RFI, French historian Muriel Salle, professor at the Claude Bernard Faculty of Medicine, in Lyon, and author, with neurobiologist Catherine Vidal, of the book “Women and Health, a Masculine Question?” centrist health begins in the classroom.
“It is necessary to make students aware of preconceived ideas involving men and women”, he says. “For example, that men are more resistant to pain and women are more emotional”. If this sounds abstract, the data, on the other hand, have been confirming time and time again what many of us women —and, I would say, any non-cis-white collective— have already intuited perhaps for a long time: that there persists a treatment gender-biased approach to health, with multiple impacts.
According to research carried out in different countries, women tend to receive diagnoses later than men in at least 700 diseases. We live longer, but with less quality of life. A study in Denmark of 6.9 million people, for example, found a delay in diagnosis of 2 years for female cancers and up to 4.5 years for metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
Pain discredit. Although they are twice as likely to suffer from chronic pain as men, women are also less likely to be prescribed painkillers and have their pain symptoms dismissed as psychological or “psychosomatic.” The disbelief regarding symptoms can harm women who live with excruciatingly painful diseases such as endometriosis — in this case, the correct diagnosis can take 7 to 10 years.
Despite medical advances in recent years, women are still up to twice as likely to die from a heart attack, due to mainly male investigative and therapeutic approaches.
In the context of multifactorial diseases such as autoimmune diseases, in which three out of four patients are women, the journey can also be arduous. The president of the American Association of Autoimmune Diseases, Virginia Ladd, says that 40% of these women report “having heard from a doctor that they are complaining or too focused on their health”. On average, they see four specialists in three years before getting a diagnosis.
“When they finally figure out what’s wrong, they’re grateful, even though they know they have a chronic condition,” he says. “Finally, someone heard them.”
Not to mention the “gender bias” prevalent until recently in the investigative field. Between 1977 and 1993, for example, the FDA eliminated the participation of women of childbearing age from most clinical trials. Just think about the consequences. Etc.
For all that and more, I’m grateful for that Gray Monday call. It only lasted a minute, it took some nerve, and it changed everything.
More than happy for me, I thought that, in the future, a certain doctor in a certain corner of the world might be able to hold the hands of an anguished patient with more empathy, really listening to the human being in front of her. That would be beautiful.
After hanging up the phone, I sat down on a park bench and wept freely, ignoring the little grandpa-women-in-the-morning-overcoats fluttering past me and watching me curiously.
A seed, a tree, forest.
I messed up
Inspired by an initiative by the New York Times, Folha invited six of its columnists to revisit errors and outdated opinions that were published in their columns over the years.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
