There was a rather distressing article in the "Health" section of this morning's Washington Post. For nearly two years, Karima Hijane, a mother in her early thirties, lived with menopause-like symptoms, accompanied by migraines and aching bones. She went from doctor to doctor, specialist to specialist, but no one could give her an accurate diagnosis. Doctors told her to exercise more or that her symptoms were "just stress." When the doctors and specialists didn't see an easy answer, they threw up their hands. Karima Hijane was later diagnosed with Primary Ovarian Insufficiency, a rare--but certainly diagnosable--disease.
I know this is a common story in the medical profession--patient goes from doctor to doctor for years with little or no explanation--but it seems especially true with women's health issues. The medical system in our country has hijacked so many of the choices that were once freely available to us: the right to see a doctor, midwife, PA, Nurse Practioner, you name it for our well-woman visits; the right to choose how and when we decide to become pregnant; the right to choose how and where to deliver our children. From doctors and nurses who criticize midwives and doulas, to well-meaning colleagues who ask, "So when will you start having kids?" the most sacred decisions in our lives are no longer solely ours. Stories like Karima Hijane's are the all-too-familiar byproduct.
Since her diagnosis, Karima Hijane has become the President/Treasurer of Rachel's Well, a nonprofit dedicated to the improvement of women's health by "raising awareness, removing barriers to care, and stimulating research."
3 comments:
I'm going to look into this further, just to ensure the validity of "Rachel's Well" as a real charity, and not merely "our" Rachel's attempt to defraud us via a fake organization. (This reeks of George Costanza's "Human Fund.")
Just last night I was talking with someone about how difficult it is to get good medical advice given that if you ask 100 doctors what you should do for a specific situation, you'll get a hundred often wildly different answers. So "trust your doctor" is sort of tough.
I will say that as a doula, I have seen some horrid care providers. I have also seen some amazing providers, from midwives to OBs to family practice physicians. It's refreshing to encounter them - the ones who provide all the reasonable options to educate people to make good, informed decisions about their own care.
It goes without saying that the majority of medical research is done from the male point of view. If you look at heart research, for example, the medicines that you find are a direct result of research with males. I suspect most females aren't even aware that their symptoms are different from that of males. The aspirin regimen was researched on males. So, my dears, we are still behind in the eyes of the medical establishment.
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