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ok, i'm trying to write this and not make it a rant, but this issue is something that's affected most of my life, so i can't promise anything.
i think there is definately an unwillingness for men to get medical attention. perhaps this is down to the very old fashioned view that boys don't cry? my experience of men when they are ill, however, is that they do make a godawful fuss - punching walls because of a night time coughing session, constant whining for sympathy. a bloke at work came down with pleuresy and had two or three weeks off, with a huge fuss made of him when he got back - i'd just suffered the same condition but got myself some medication and made the flight to america i was booked on. but generally men seem to want to suffer at home.
maybe they've got the right idea: i'm tired, really tired, of not being taken seriously by doctors. one of most enduring memories of childhood was seeing my mother, delirious with menstrual pain, month after month, and being told by successive doctors that it was all in her mind. granted, that was a while ago (early 1970s to mid 1980s), but it's only now, after 20 years of being told to 'take an aspirin' for the same thing, that i'm finally being listened to and having tests. but that was only after taking a big overdose of over the counter painkillers and passing out. about ten years ago, as i've discussed on barbelith before, i was terribly ill - some of my insides tore and i was screaming in agony for about three months. on my first visit to the doctor, he examined me and started running around, making calls in another office. after seeing a consultant i was taken in for an urgent operation, and during it i was diagnosed with crohn's disease. i wasn't told - when i had recovered from the op, i asked them what was wrong with me. they lied. i only found out six or seven years later when i asked to see my medical notes. would a man have been told told a chronic and incurable condition was just a little problem caused by 'straining on the toilet'? i really don't know.
as for the mental health system, i'm not the only woman i know who's basically been told that they're 'a bright girl and so shouldn't be having these kinds of problems'. any of you barbemen been called a 'bright boy'? in your mid twenties?
phew. made it without ranting too incoherently. basically i think a lot of people are treated badly by the medical profession - too many forget their patients are real people, who are hurting, confused about why they're hurting, and scared, and need and deserve to know exactly what's going on with their bodies. |
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