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A review by melodine
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
4.0
Fascinating book. Just writing this review so I remember some main/interesting points. Also I would like to say while this books point out the errors of medicine and medical practitioners, it is not a blame book. Yes doctors make errors but it is an imperfect system, with imperfect people, and everyone has their own biases/prejudices/preconceived notions that they are not always aware of. I would say the most important take away from this is to make sure you are advocating for yourself because ultimately it is your life and no one else will care so much.
Women react differently to different medications and present diseases differently and have diseases that are more common to them then to men. Even after the science community was aware of this, women would often not be included in studies as it was more effort to account for the difference in genders. There was also a time when all women who had the possibility of being pregnant were not even allowed in the studies at all as they were not trusted to make their own decisions on participating or not.
Many doctors are aware that diagnostic mistakes are made but very few are willing to assume they have made some, partly because they get so little feedback. Patients are unlikely to return once they have found answers elsewhere and so doctors are left to assume their original diagnosis was correct.
The amount of privilege a person has can greatly affect our knowledge of diseases. There are whole illnesses that were considered to just affect well off white women because those were the women who had the time, money, and/or support to go to multiple doctors if they were ignored or dismissed at first.
When a doctor cannot find any physical symptoms and all testing comes back as normal, then a number of them will decide it is psychosomatic and no testing is needed to make that diagnosis. A whole variety of symptoms can be swept under this diagnosis. Also once a patient has been diagnosed with a psychosomatic disorder it can end up haunting them and coloring future physician opinions. An interesting note was that there were cases of psychologists making a physical diagnosis, or at least saying that whatever was happening with the patient was not psychosomatic.
Doctors are also prone to assume any trouble a woman has is related to her reproductive capabilities, so either menstruation, or pregnant, or postpartum, or menopause instead of looking further. There are countless examples of kidney stones, bursting cysts, appendicitis, and even chronic diseases that have been overlooked as assumption that everything is normal when a woman is in pain or tired. This is not just something from doctors as it is general knowledge that being a woman hurts and having a period hurts and so how many times are we as women needlessly suffering because we think it falls under the realm of normal.
Ovarian cancer was once considered a silent killer and it was in all the documentation that there were no symptoms from it in spite of women stating differently. Women with ovarian cancer were told their symptoms could not possibly be from the cancer because it was symptom less. It got to the point where at one talk on ovarian cancer, the speaker doctor was talking about it's lack of symptoms and audience protested that he was wrong. Another doctor in the audience decided to do a survey on the women so this could be documented and there was a greater than 100% response rate as the women passed the survey onto other ovarian cancer survivors they know.
Women react differently to different medications and present diseases differently and have diseases that are more common to them then to men. Even after the science community was aware of this, women would often not be included in studies as it was more effort to account for the difference in genders. There was also a time when all women who had the possibility of being pregnant were not even allowed in the studies at all as they were not trusted to make their own decisions on participating or not.
Many doctors are aware that diagnostic mistakes are made but very few are willing to assume they have made some, partly because they get so little feedback. Patients are unlikely to return once they have found answers elsewhere and so doctors are left to assume their original diagnosis was correct.
The amount of privilege a person has can greatly affect our knowledge of diseases. There are whole illnesses that were considered to just affect well off white women because those were the women who had the time, money, and/or support to go to multiple doctors if they were ignored or dismissed at first.
When a doctor cannot find any physical symptoms and all testing comes back as normal, then a number of them will decide it is psychosomatic and no testing is needed to make that diagnosis. A whole variety of symptoms can be swept under this diagnosis. Also once a patient has been diagnosed with a psychosomatic disorder it can end up haunting them and coloring future physician opinions. An interesting note was that there were cases of psychologists making a physical diagnosis, or at least saying that whatever was happening with the patient was not psychosomatic.
Doctors are also prone to assume any trouble a woman has is related to her reproductive capabilities, so either menstruation, or pregnant, or postpartum, or menopause instead of looking further. There are countless examples of kidney stones, bursting cysts, appendicitis, and even chronic diseases that have been overlooked as assumption that everything is normal when a woman is in pain or tired. This is not just something from doctors as it is general knowledge that being a woman hurts and having a period hurts and so how many times are we as women needlessly suffering because we think it falls under the realm of normal.
Ovarian cancer was once considered a silent killer and it was in all the documentation that there were no symptoms from it in spite of women stating differently. Women with ovarian cancer were told their symptoms could not possibly be from the cancer because it was symptom less. It got to the point where at one talk on ovarian cancer, the speaker doctor was talking about it's lack of symptoms and audience protested that he was wrong. Another doctor in the audience decided to do a survey on the women so this could be documented and there was a greater than 100% response rate as the women passed the survey onto other ovarian cancer survivors they know.