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A review by sandrareilly513
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
5.0
Maya Dusenbery has pulled back the curtain and opened readers' eyes to what it's like to be a woman with an illness. Often ignored, labeled "hysterical" or a hypochondriac, and told we're not as sick as we think we are, many women walk into their doctors' offices with the odds stacked against them. Dusenbery explains the issues women face each time they go to see a medical professional, arguing her case with compelling evidence including statistics like women being 5 times more likely to be sent home from the ER in the midst of a heart attack due to the misconception that heart disease is a "men's" issue despite the fact that it kills more women each year than cancer.
I found myself in the pages of Doing Harm, particularly the section on chronic fatigue and how people think it just means you're tired when, in reality, those who suffer from CFS are "functionally exhausted" and that the majority of people with CFS are likely to go misdiagnosed because doctors aren't comfortable diagnosing (and some don't "believe in") chronic fatigue syndrome. It felt so reassuring to know there are other people who understand, but it also felt a bit overwhelming to think that sexism is never going to leave medicine. I have been blessed with a wonderful endocrinologist who takes each of my concerns very seriously, but she was the third I consulted before finding someone who would listen. The fact that most medical educational institutions only teach one or a few courses on women's health, which many consider to be solely reproductive health, leaves me defeated. We expect our doctors to know how to help us and what is best for us, and it is depressing to think that some are not as open-minded, accepting, and willing to help as we'd hope they would be.
I found myself in the pages of Doing Harm, particularly the section on chronic fatigue and how people think it just means you're tired when, in reality, those who suffer from CFS are "functionally exhausted" and that the majority of people with CFS are likely to go misdiagnosed because doctors aren't comfortable diagnosing (and some don't "believe in") chronic fatigue syndrome. It felt so reassuring to know there are other people who understand, but it also felt a bit overwhelming to think that sexism is never going to leave medicine. I have been blessed with a wonderful endocrinologist who takes each of my concerns very seriously, but she was the third I consulted before finding someone who would listen. The fact that most medical educational institutions only teach one or a few courses on women's health, which many consider to be solely reproductive health, leaves me defeated. We expect our doctors to know how to help us and what is best for us, and it is depressing to think that some are not as open-minded, accepting, and willing to help as we'd hope they would be.