this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 55 points 15 hours ago

Had IUDs inserted twice in two different hospital systems in different states, but it was the same kind of awful both times.

Both times I was told to take ibuprofen beforehand, and that did absolutely nothing. But because it had been so bad the first time, with the second one I thought I'd be smart and took a vicodin I had from a prior procedure.

I still to lay in the room for 15 min after, trying not to vomit, and I nearly passed out. After , I walked to my car where I just sat there for 30 more min to rest. Even with vicodin it is the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life.

Not one ounce of sympathy or concern from anyone on staff.

It's nice there are new guidelines, but I feel like it's going to take more than that to make healthcare workers give a shit about this.

[–] ef9357@lemmy.world 39 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (6 children)

Let’s state the truth. Doctors do NOT care about women one bit, unless said woman is actively pregnant. And then it is ONLY to ensure the baby is ok. Otherwise I’ve yet to meet a doctor (male or female - doesn’t matter) who fines one damn about women.

ETA to add that doctors need to be told to give women pain relief is proof.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, that opinion is rather over the top. You're surely right when saying that doctors need to be more aware of issues that women might face, doctors should be more aware that female bodies work different and as such respond differently to medication, these are known issues

But to claim that they simply don't care is simply not true. I'm sorry if you had bad experiences with doctors but this is not the normal

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

That’s extreme. If doctors don’t care then why did they become doctors? Why go through all of medical school and residency with years of lost sleep and exhaustion to become a doctor? Why not become a lawyer instead? High end corporate lawyers make far more money than even the highest paid doctors.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's still money. But with the moral superiority too. "I'm a doctor"

But also, they're saying that people don't care about women. There's an overwhelming amount of evidence for that. Have you SEEN the tool that's used on the cervix for this procedure? It's actually insane.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Upwards of 80% of OBGYNs are women. Saying that none of these women care about other women, that they went into a field that specializes in caring for women’s health without caring about women, is an extraordinary claim.

I think what we’re seeing here is not at all a lack of caring but a mismatch in expectations vs reality. Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life. At the same time, it is a routine outpatient procedure and a specialist doctor can perform thousands of IUD insertions over the course of her career. Do we expect this doctor to react with the same intensity and outpouring of empathy every single time? Or would it be more reasonable to expect that she’d get used to seeing her patients in pain and be numbed by the experience? Compassion fatigue is a real and extremely common phenomenon. Furthermore, I would expect that a doctor who is unduly influenced by the pain of their patients may be compromised in their ability to perform under pressure.

As for the procedure itself, my understanding is that the majority of the pain is not caused by the tools but by the cervix reflexively producing intense cramps in an effort to expel a foreign object: the IUD. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.

[–] ReiRose@lemmy.world 14 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life.

...

There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.

Erm..."oh you're having the worst pain of your life, here have a combination muscle relaxant and acetaminophen mix that's available over the counter. And also loose a days income"

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I'm curious what a doctor taking the pain seriously would look like to you. Are you expecting something like a locally injected anesthetic or full in-patient sedation?

[–] Seleni@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

Either! Both would be better than throwing up from the pain, passing out, and then being sneered at for both.

[–] bss03@infosec.pub 5 points 10 hours ago

Perhaps at least a prescription pain killer taken orally?

I would certainly support some sort of local, along the lines of what dentists use.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Do you know what actually causes the pain or is your understanding just an assumption?

I like how even in the article it calls out medical gaslighting.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I talked to a woman right after she had one inserted and that’s what she told me: intense cramps. I believe her. I’m not just spouting my opinion based on nothing.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

If only science would study women as much as men, this procedure from the 1800s could be understood. It's getting better for sure, at least you believed the one person who you talked to about it. You ever see the device they use to "pinch" and open the cervix? I could never. It's called a tenaculum and looks like a torture device from the 1800s.

It's well discussed and documented that medical science regularly ignores and brushes aside women, and is constantly several decades behind men's science. So regardless of male or female obgyns or doctors, the scientific understanding SYSTEMICALLY of women's issues AND women in general are more often brushed aside than not, so this push for actually doing something about the pain is a step in the right direction.

We already have rampant sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism in society as a whole - why would you believe academia and medical and scientific communities would be immune to those problems?

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (3 children)

Science does ignore women a lot of the time but it’s not because they hate women. It’s because of medical ethics rules which make it a lot more expensive to include women in studies. You have to pay for pregnancy tests for women in the study and you have to do all kinds of corrections and extra analyses to make sure women’s menstrual cycles are not interfering with the data. Women who do get pregnant during the study need to be detected and removed from the study because any effects from the study that harm their baby can expose the researchers to enormous lawsuits.

So many studies, which don’t have a lot of money to begin with (we’re talking university studies run by grad students, not massive clinical trials run by big pharma) exclude women because it’s cheaper and easier and they get to run more studies as a result. The major exception to this are psychological studies that don’t carry the same risks, but these are usually run on the psychology students themselves (many of which are required to participate in them in order to receive course credits).

[–] Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 13 minutes ago) (1 children)

Considering men default humans and women an "other," is the exact bias that has held back medical care for half the fucking population.

Everyone's hormones are always in flux, every day. Eating food can drastically affect your hormones. Aerobic excercise can affect your hormones. Men have hormonal cycles as well.

What you wrote here about costs associated with medical research on women seems paraphrased from some out-of-date medical journal. Unless menstrual cycles are being studied, you do not "have to do all kinds of correction and analyses" to make sure they're not affecting that study. I have no idea where you heard that, and would go as far as to say you just made it up. I don't even know where to begin with the pregnancy test thing, unless you're thinking of only medical trials, specifically.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It’s not only clinical trials where you test on people, chemically. There are a ton of tests for skin care products to compare their effectiveness. These have already gone through trials for safety but long-term research on their effects is important.

One example is the anti-acne medication Accutane which is known to cause birth defects. This drug cannot be given to women who may be pregnant under any circumstances. I believe doctors even require proof that the patient is on birth control before prescribing it.

As for menstrual cycles: they are known to affect skin, hair, joint mobility, pain sensitivity, mood, food preferences, weight, and more. Tons and tons of studies are affected by this. Everything from dieting to mental health care, skin care, hair care, and even sports medicine, exercise, and recovery from injury.

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Pragmatism and idealism are almost always opposites, morality often lies on the side of idealism, and pragmatism is often used to sidestep morality.

We need to do better; it's far better and efficient for society to do so.

I understand that explanation is not justification, but even if you assume this is a complete and wholly true explanation, do you really not see the problems with potentially justifying these things? Imagine like never feeding a few of your kids "because it's too expensive". That's completely unacceptable, incomplete, and deeply flawed, scientifically, and leads to MASSIVE problems in society.

These are systemic oversights that needn't happen in almost all cases. It's the exact same bullshit as promoting the men's sports teams, budgeting, and prioritizing them more for resources and time. It's literally systemic oppression.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Oh I can’t justify it at all. These things come about because of complex interactions throughout society. Scientists didn’t decide for themselves to have these strict rules on experiments involving women who might become pregnant. Those rules were imposed on them by politicians and regulators whose goals were not to promote the best possible research.

The same goes for the situation in the US with employers providing health insurance through group policies. That situation came about during a war-time cap on employee compensation. Employers used the insurance benefit as a way to circumvent the cap. Now Americans seem to be stuck with a system they increasingly do not want.

One of the worst heartbreaks I experienced growing up was when I realized that no one is really in charge of anything and that we’re all trapped in a system we can’t escape. 1984 was a big influence for me on this one.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 hours ago

I hear what you're saying about budget, but this just goes to show how women are considered like some special kind of human. As if men, with all their hormonal and biological peculiarities, were the default.

Women are kind of a large part of the human population -- over half of it. It's not like some nice demographic.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Private medicine is why people distrust doctors in America. They like to believe they are corrupt because of the costs and drug scandals.

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[–] Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world 65 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It was one of the worst pains I've ever experienced and they gave me mother fucking tylenol.

I got the IUD after twelve years of trying to convince doctors my cramps were unusually bad, and being prescribed mother fucking tylenol, for what I later learned were "muscle spasms similar to labor," every. single. month.

The IUD helped! If you have the same, ask about a Mirena and bring a flask of something strong. Like opium.

[–] VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 1 day ago

This is cool. I guess I can see how it would come across as an Onion article, but Doctors historically don't actually take women's pain in general seriously, let alone pain that is specific to women themselves. Awesome news.

[–] lechatron@lemmy.today 79 points 1 day ago (17 children)

Be a step in the right direction.

Fun fact: they stopped working on a male birth control pill because of the side effects it was causing. Most of those side effects are experienced by women taking the female birth control pill.

Fun fact 2: the chainsaw was invented to open the pubic Symphysis joint during difficult child birth.

Bonus banger to enjoy how dismissive healthcare is for women.

(as one of my friends constantly reminds me, my facts are not very fun)

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

Few medical doctors have been as lauded—and loathed—as James Marion Sims.

Credited as the “father of modern gynecology,” Sims developed pioneering tools and surgical techniques related to women’s reproductive health. In 1876, he was named president of the American Medical Association, and in 1880, he became president of the American Gynecological Society, an organization he helped found. The 19th-century physician has been lionized with a half-dozen statues around the country.

But because Sims’ research was conducted on enslaved Black women without anesthesia, medical ethicists, historians and others say his use of enslaved Black bodies as medical test subjects falls into a long, ethically bereft history that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Henrietta Lacks. Critics say Sims cared more about the experiments than in providing therapeutic treatment, and that he caused untold suffering by operating under the racist notion that Black people did not feel pain.

[…]

In the 1850s, Sims moved to New York and opened the first-ever Woman’s Hospital, where he continued testing controversial medical treatments on his patients. When any of Sims’s patients died, the blame, according to him, lay squarely with “the sloth and ignorance of their mothers and the Black midwives who attended them.” He did not believe anything was wrong with his methods.

[–] RedPostItNote@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

IUDs are a pretty terrible experience for many women. My uterus wouldn’t stop trying to reject mine for two years. These don’t work at all for a lot of women.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 15 points 20 hours ago

You want to get angry with a group of people?

Do a group read of Invisible Women, it’ll fuck you up how badly science and engineering fucks up rather than include women because it’s hard 😬

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[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 105 points 1 day ago (13 children)

Holy crap, is it not currently?

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 12 points 15 hours ago

It's not, AND these are "guidelines", which will amount to nothing.

Hell it doesn't even need to be about lady bits for doctors to be dismissive. My wife has been through 3 GP's trying to get some hip pain looked at. Finally found one that would at least do imaging, but they just kinda shrugged it off while she can't even go foot over foot up/down steps.

She finally said screw it and went right to a PT. They had it 50% better two sessions later.

The real kicker? The GP's who both blew her off were women.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 117 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Many doctors dismiss a significant amount of pain complaints in general because of the small minority of drug abusers seeking pain meds.

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 81 points 1 day ago (6 children)

How are we supposed to punish every single member of the tiny minority who abuse the system if we're not allowed unlimited collateral damage with impunity?

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[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 52 points 1 day ago

I've been told it ranges from "it's a quick pinch", through "that's just the way it is" to "we could give a numbing shot, but it would be just as uncomfortable and make this take longer so there's no point".

As a man looking in from the outside, women's reproductive healthcare has a level of dismissiveness around pain that makes the dumbest machismo look quaint. There's the male doctors who just dismiss women's pain, and the female doctors who know and just "that's how it is" it. And then the one 50 year old obstetrics doctor in the country who understands the balance of "childbirth intrinsically hurts" and "we can manage the hell out of pain if we actually do our jobs" who gets to enter a room for 30 seconds, implicitly convey that they're a saint and perfect human being and then immediately get paged to perform emergency surgery for a car accident involving multiple pregnant women, at least in our experience.

That last bit is the only exaggeration. I'm sure there's actually two or three doctors like her per state. The rest is true.

Dismissiveness towards women's pain is upsettingly common in healthcare. From plain old sexism (a woman's 7/10 is a mans 4/10 because women are sensitive) to women's symptoms manifesting differently than men's (women's heart attacks don't present the same as men's, and differences in abdominal anatomy means there's more ways for pain to mask itself as coming from somewhere else.), the end result is that I can't think of a women I know and have talked to about it who hasn't laughingly referenced a doctor dismissing their pain and ordering a pregnancy test.

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