Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System That Makes You Fight for Your Life

This emphatic guide from Let’s Feel Better blogger Jacqueline (Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness) provides advice on how women can overcome the dismissiveness of unsympathetic doctors to receive necessary care. Born with hypogammaglobulinemia, a rare immune deficiency disease, Jacqueline recounts her struggles to persuade care providers to take her pain seriously, noting that she wasn’t diagnosed until age 19 because doctors were convinced her problems were “all in your head.” To prevent such dismissiveness, Jacqueline recommends women dress for each appointment like it’s a job interview, but avoid wearing cosmetics, since doctors might reason “they couldn’t be that sick if they spent hours doing their makeup.” Suggestions on what to do during an appointment stress keeping one’s cool, since getting worked up might be noted in medical records that future doctors will see. Patients might also bring a journal, photos, or other evidence documenting their symptoms, or invite a loved one to serve as an advocate. Jacqueline’s personal anecdotes offer infuriating glimpses into the medical profession’s hubris (After getting pressured into undergoing an emergency procedure with insufficient anesthetic, Jacqueline exclaimed mid-operation she was in severe pain, to which a nurse replied, “You’re not”), as well as solid advice to help patients voice their needs. This will be a salve for women tired of unjustly skeptical doctors. (Oct.)