It was a cold January morning, and I’d come home from a driving lesson.
I’d started to feel sick on the way home, and ran straight to the toilet after rushing through the door. I tried to be sick, but I couldn’t throw up.
I went to bed, and the next three days I was in an out of consciousness. I remember watching Clueless on repeat, getting cold sweats and headaches and horrendous stomach pain.
I could barely eat nor drink; it felt like I was having multiple out-of-body experiences.
I had spent that year in and out of the doctors’ surgery, begging for help.
I had been experiencing excessive weight loss to the point I was extremely underweight. I was also experiencing chronic constipation, stomach pain and rectal bleeding.
It was a different response every time: always related to ‘women’s issues’.
I was 19 at the time; my doctor wouldn’t believe me, no matter how hard I tried to be heard.
My excessive weight loss was an eating disorder. My stomach pain was simply period pain, and the rectal bleeding was actually just a period.
I tried again and again to explain something was wrong, but I was labelled a hypochondriac, and ignored.
A year after my first visit, my large intestine perforated. I had been living with ulcerative colitis. I had the intestine removed, and a stoma bag formed. 10 months later, I had the stoma reversed, to allow me to go to the toilet ‘normally’ again. But my life is far from normal.
As I write this, I am home from the hospital after yet another flare up.
I am practically housebound and live with chronic diarrhoea, excessive rectal bleeding, stomach pain and often incontinence.
My ulcerative colitis is back in my rectum, and I am currently undergoing tests and studies. Again, I’ve been begging for a long time to be seen because I knew something was wrong with my body.
It seems there is a theme of young women being misdiagnosed. A while ago, for Metro.co.uk, I interviewed a number of women who had spent years fighting for endometriosis diagnoses. Their stories were similar to mine: Ending up with major surgeries because doctors wouldn’t listen; and branded every symptom simply a ‘bad period’.
I’m tired of women not being listened to. Not taken seriously. I was 20 minutes from death after the perforation — it has left me with a trauma like no other. There is nothing quite like hearing your own bowel explode inside of you. But it could have all been avoided had I been listened to.
I’m writing this on reflection of my hospital visit tonight; where instead of investigating my heavy bleeding, they were focused on doing pregnancy tests (negative, by the way).
We as women know our bodies — we know when there is something wrong. We know what is ‘normal’ for our bodies. And we know what’s not.
Doctors need to start taking us seriously, because there are far too many of us being forced into unimaginable situations because they refuse to listen.
We must continue to fight to be heard; for our health issues to be acknowledged. It shouldn’t be our job to be taken seriously; but sadly it seems it is.
If you’re someone struggling to be heard, please don’t stop fighting. Don’t stop standing up for yourself.
And if by any chance there is a doctor reading this right now: Please take women seriously. Please stop branding us hysterical and dramatic.
When it comes to our health, I would rather be ‘hysterical and dramatic’… than dead.
