Women who have experienced perimenopause know that it’s no joke. The bleeding, sleepless nights, hot flashes, and itching are just a few of the miserable symptoms. Distressingly, doctors don’t always take the time to listen to their patients. Many perimenopausal women feel as if their concerns aren’t important. One woman had a horrific experience at a hospital recently and shared her frustrations in Reddit’s perimenopause sub. Sadly, she realized many other women share the same struggles.
The original poster, 47, had a terrible bleeding episode that landed her in the emergency room. She bled so heavily she wound up passing out on the bathroom floor at home. When she got to the hospital, she felt gaslit by staff.
“At the first ER, the nurse, who must have been in her 60s and probably went through this herself at some point, just looked at the doctor and said, ‘Oh, she had a vasovagal episode,’ with this tone like, ‘Oh, poor thing, she’s just overreacting.’ I mean, I had just told her that I nearly passed out from the blood loss, and she just brushed it off like I was being dramatic,” OP wrote. “Isn’t it sad that even women in the medical field, who should know how brutal this is, still treat us like we’re just being emotional or hysterical?”
She went to a second ER and waited hours to see a specialist. But the specialist never came, and instead, she got a prescription for a “massive dose of progesterone” and was sent home. Her husband went to pick up the meds, and the dose shocked the pharmacist. OP felt pushed off and frustrated.
“Now, three days later, I’m sitting here, still spotting, still in pain, my boobs hurt like hell, I’m soaking my shirts with night sweats, and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I feel scared, exhausted, and alone. And it p—es me off that we’re expected to just push through this like it’s no big deal, like we’re being dramatic for saying this sucks,” she wrote. “So, yeah, I’m done being gaslit about this. I’m done being made to feel like my pain isn’t real. If you’re going through this too, I’m with you.”
OP received a ton of support in the comment section from women who feel just like her.
“This hell is worse than puberty was, particularly because we are older and wiser and d— well know what’s going on with our d— bodies. We enter this stage already knowing we won’t be listened to by most of the medical community (or the general world),” one woman wrote. “Just because every woman goes through this does not make our individual experiences with it any less significant. But I still gaslight myself because I feel insignificant and very alone.”
“I feel so angry too. My mom has also passed, my mother-in-law got a hysterectomy 40+ years ago at the first sign of menopausal distress,” another woman wrote. “we truly feel like the first generation to f—ing scream about this. UGH. But like you, my husband is a beacon on help support and love. Sending strength.”
One person made an interesting observation about her female doctors. “I’m so sorry this happened to you and it was just so scary! It’s really interesting that mostly female professionals seem to dismiss my symptoms,” she wrote. “We all have to take each other seriously. Perhaps there’s something about competition. My male doctor actually took what I said seriously.”
OP shared another thought in the comments. “It’s like we’ve spent our whole lives learning how to listen to our bodies, only to be completely ignored when we actually speak up about what we’re feeling,” she wrote. “Just because this is ‘normal’ doesn’t mean it’s not brutal, and it definitely doesn’t make our experiences any less real or significant.”
