Medical neglect causing disabilities is much harder to prove than you would think. There is always the benefit of the doubt that doctors are assumed to have tried their best to treat you and that it was a ‘coincidence’ that you happen to have acquired a chronic condition.

There’s nothing unusual about women with abdominal pain being sent home from the ER untreated and berated for coming here ‘for no reason’. Women are systemically denied treatment from the ER because every form of abdominal pain is downplayed to being ‘just female abdominal pain’. I had severe abdominal pain and spotting when I went to the ER on a Friday evening. I had to wait 4 excruciating hours after an initial screening. Andoctor was finally available and I tried to explain that this wasn’t just a normal period and begged to have it checked out, but he doctor wouldn’t hear it. He sent me home with ibuprofen and Tylenol and told me not to come back unless it was an emergency.

The OTC meds did jack shit and I already told the doctor I tried ibuprofen before coming. I was left to stew for 3 days, crying, in excruciating pain, and vomiting until I was able to see urgent care on Monday. Those 3 days were the most painful days of my life at the time. At which point I was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic ruptured ovarian cyst through ultrasound that was 3.5 inches in diameter. I was sent in for laparoscopic surgery to remove the cyst. I though that would be the end of it, but that was just the beginning.

I have spoken to my PCP, rheumatologist, and pain therapist about this, and it was universally agreed that the 3 days of neglect and severe pain was a significant contributor to fibromyalgia. Had I been immediately treated, there was a good chance that I may not have ended up permanently in pain. But there is no way to prove it. Any doctor could just say that I would have gotten it anyway.

The ER experience and the pain was beyond traumatizing, but the best part is that this is just the first one. You see, once you have fibromyalgia nothing you ever say in the ER will be believed anymore. The next two times I went to the ER, once for vomiting 24 hours straight and not keeping any fluids down, and once for severe full body pain and a 105F fever, I would be met when even more disdain and disbelief than before. Both times I was told by the advice nurse to go to the ER, and both times I would be eye rolled or reprimanded by at least one person. Keep in mind that I have already had fibromyalgia at this point, and each time I visited the ER it was under severe pain. And each time I regret mentioning fibromyalgia at all because I could immediately tell the change in tone and the insinuations of how I was ‘one of those’ implying that I am a drug seeker. I had to beg everytime to be treated and to be taken seriously which was immensely difficult to do when I was already delirious from pain.

These people don’t know what pain is like with this condition or that how many of us want to kill ourselves because we can’t handle the pain and stigma anymore. I’m not telling people about this because I have some personal vendetta, I’m trying to warn people to take everything ER staff say with a grain of salt because ER doctors are human and humans are not immune to implicit biases, and medical misjudgments are often made at the expense of patients who don’t fit their preferred demographic.