Piloting Your Life: In-Flight Entertainment (Gaslighting Women in Healthcare) (Jan 22, 2019)
Welcome Back My Gaslit Passengers:
I am reading anything I can get my hands and eyeballs on around women’s health and recently read a very interesting article titled The Doctor Doesn’t Listen to Her but the Media is Starting To. In it, the author talks about everything from women not being heard, to being dismissed, mistreated, and misdiagnosed, to gaslighting. This is not a knock on all healthcare providers and one of the author’s sources, Katherine Sherif “believes most of the minimization of women’s health concerns is ‘unconscious’ on the part of both male and female doctors, but blames general societal sexism for gaps in women’s sexual and reproductive health care.”
We are also in a situation where too little research (and funding) has gone towards understanding women’s bodies and the understanding and appropriate treatment of conditions suffered by women. This includes conditions that affect both men and women but where research and treatment have primarily been focused on men. The article Do Clinical Trials Have a Sex Problem explains why.
This is hitting us in our home as our 14 year-old daughter was experiencing some symptoms that first led us to her pediatrician and then to my gynecologist, largely because I kept pushing for answers. I love her pediatrician and my gynecologist (both women) but there’s a lot of “let’s give it some time” kind of thinking that I refuse to accept. After some blood tests and a sonogram it’s looking like PCOS but there may be something else that is leading us to another specialist. I don’t think we have the answers yet and it’s up to me to advocate for my daughter.
I am not medically trained nor am I a scientist despite having been in life sciences for 20+ years and an investor in digital health. What I do have is a mother’s intuition, a nice rolodex of resources I’ve connected with over the years, enough experience in the space to be pushy, and a close proximity to some of the best health institutions in the world of which I plan to take advantage. This is as I navigate our health insurance bureaucracy and the billing dysfunction of Palo Alto Medical Foundation. We can’t get to value based care fast enough for me. This was not the best year for me to decide to increase our co-pays and deductibles to decrease my annual medical insurance premiums. As I am self-employed, this all comes straight out of our pockets.
I am fortunate to have the resources to get to the bottom of my daughter’s health issues. While PCOS isn’t treatable (a real WTF moment I can tell you as the “CDC has estimated that 6–12% of the female adult population in the US” has this condition), the side effects are fairly manageable until she (if she) decides to have children at which point reproductive technology should have advanced to provide her with viable options.
In-Flight Entertainment (Katie McMillan)
In the first interview for 2019, I had the pleasure of speaking to Katie D. McMillan, MPH, from Duke Health and her own microblog Well Made Health. It is refreshing to talk to others who are as passionate about women’s health as I am, and it’s even lovelier to gain insights from a new perspective. Her experience at Duke University Health with the Mobile App Gateway gives her unique insights into health and wellness solutions and healthcare delivery. This is the first of many conversations I expect to have with Katie as we continue to raise awareness around, and support the development of, women’s health technologies. Enjoy!
PYL086: Katie McMillan and Terri Mead discuss women’s health solutions.
