Medical Gaslighting

Medical gaslighting is a form of abuse prevalent in the medical community especially with minorities and women. If the phrase it is all in your head sounds familiar then you may have experienced it.

As a plus sized, biological female, I have my fair share of stories to tell. The phrase if you would just loose weight then X is very familiar to me. Apparently weight loss can heal anything from a torn tendon, hypothyroidism, and PCOS to mono.

Getting a second opinion is like second nature to me at this point. It took me 2 months of antibiotics and steroid packs for acute thyroiditis and strep through until my family at their wits end finally took me to an endocrinologist during a huge snow storm for me to be diagnosed with mono. One simple blood test missed over and over again because of my weight and medical bias.

Crippling periods with heavy blood loss and pain so bad I would vomit from the ages of 12-20 were not addressed until I ended up in the ER for a terrible stomach bug and they incidentally found ovarian cysts. Some of this was exacerbated by doctors saying just take an advil it cant be that bad and loose 50 pounds and join the military you will be fine. It did not help that the one doctor who offered me birth control for the pain at 15 was told no because it broke my Catholic mother’s heart.

At 20 I ended up getting an ovarian cyst removed. After the surgery I lost over ten pounds and two pants sizes. Then my thyroid went and it took two years to get a diagnosis which ballooned me up 100 pounds and now I am told the only thing that will fix me is weight loss surgery.

I am not sure how my doctors can advise weight loss surgery when I have had crippling abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea, vomiting, 2 ER trips, 6 biopsies, 2 diagnostic surgeries and still no answers. I will not let anyone advocate removing part of my digestive track prior to finding out whats wrong with it.

Loosing half my body weight will only cure the fact that physicians have trouble looking at me, not my pain.

All this to say I have a chronic illness and I am working on getting healed but it is difficult when I am told it is all in my head or that it will all go away if I just loose weight.

Love and light

Self-Care with Surgery

Hello All,

I recently went through a colonoscopy and Endoscopy for diagnostic purposes. The doctors took several biopsies to see if they can get a clear picture on why my IBS-D is so severe. No news yet, but in the mean time I would like to talk about surgical self-care.

For me this is not just about reading the pre-op and post- op care instructions, it is about setting yourself up for success and knowing things will not go as planned.

For me, they had me set up with a seven day prep. 7 days prior to surgery stop taking any NSAID pain relievers, 4 days prior to surgery start a GI soft diet, 24 hours prior to surgery liquids only, 12 hours before start the suprep, 6 hours before finish the suprep.

In order to take care of myself I made sure to schedule this right before the weekend so I could take my time to heal, and I took off Monday. In hind sight I should have take off Thursday as well.

The second step is to make sure to read the instructions at least twice, the instructions were several pages long and reading it twice made sure I had all the details I needed.

The third step is making a shopping list to make sure I did not need to go searching for foods that fit into my diet.

The fourth step is to watch you tube videos about the procedure. This help relive anxiety about the unknown but also gave me meal ideas.

The last step was follow through.

Thursday on 100% liquids was difficult, I was very hungry, had a headache, and some dizzy spells but I made it through. I would recommend taking that day off if possible.

The prep day was difficult because of the discomfort, I was freezing the whole time and had to turn the heat on in the house.

Love and light to all!

Happy Pride Month

Happy Pride Month you all!

I am happy to be here talking about this but also a little disappointed. One of the spaces I am in is the true crime pod cast space. I listen to them while I write my notes or during my commute. However I feel like every June it becomes trendy to talk about LGBTQ folks then all I hear about is cis/het people until the following summer.

I haven’t logged onto my podcasts apps because I know that a bunch of pod casts are going to cover LGBTQ folks getting killed and talk about how they are allies then it will be radio silence as soon as the clock hits July 1.

I guess this is all to say I’m frustrated and disappointed. LGBTQ folx matter! As a pansexual female leaning non binary I matter.

I guess I don’t understand why people can’t be allies all year round. This feels fake to me. As is we are going to cover LGBTQ folx because it’s popular and what everyone else is doing. News flash we aren’t a hot topic.

We are people to.