I’m at the dentist’s office getting a loose filling fixed, and helping me is a lady I’ve only seen once before. She’s an elderly lady who talks in a very soft and gentle voice, kind of like how you would talk to a child. I’ve been frequenting this dental office all thirty-one years of my life, and it’s in their files I have autism (ergo, high sensitivity) and anxiety issues, so I can’t help but wonder if she just talks that way or does it on purpose for me.

Today is a hot summer day, and I’m wearing shorts and a tank top. I have several tattoos on my arms. 

The moment I walk in, she says:

Dentist: “Well, aren’t you dressed like you’re on vacation?! It can’t be that hot out, can it?”

Me: “The air conditioning in here is certainly deceiving. Outside in the sun is a different ball game.”

I lay down in the chair and get anxious about the procedure. She asks if I want to be numbed.

Me: “Yes, please. My gums are really sensitive. I have to admit, the needle for the numbing makes me very anxious, but it’s shorter suffering, so I’ll take it.”

Dentist: “Well, it’s a simple procedure, and I doubt if you need one after all. You’re a big girl. You can do without, can’t you?”

Me: “No. Please don’t underestimate how sensitive I am in my mouth. I’d like to be sedated.”

The way she talks to me makes me uncomfortable, but she agrees to numb me. She then changes her tone like she is trying to console a child.

Dentist: “Okay, we’re going to use the teeny-tiny needle for this, then. You won’t even feel it, I promise! You won’t even feel that nasty numb sensation.”

My discomfort rises to the point that I’m having a minor anxiety attack. My legs start shaking, I start to cry, and I’m fighting to keep my breathing under control. I apologize and ask her to give me a second to catch my breath.

Dentist: “Come on, open up! I don’t have all day!”

I oblige, but my hands are clenching the chair, and I’m still at the mercy of my anxiety. She numbs in different spots. She mentions putting the needle near my roots, and I yelp as I can really feel the needle there. The assistant who is also there is really nice and tells me to direct my breathing to my lower abdomen, while the dentist makes a quite misplaced comment.

Dentist: “You can be who you want to be here. It’s okay.” 

What?

When she’s done, I ask her politely:

Me: “Could you maybe please not explicitly mention what you’re doing? The less I know, the better, actually.”

Dentist: *Suddenly very blunt* “You’re so weird.”

Me: *Pauses* “Excuse me?”

Dentist: *To her assistant* “Don’t you think she’s weird? I don’t get it at all!”

Me: “Care to explain?”

Dentist: “Oh, excuse me. I wasn’t aware I was saying something strange! You have tattoos all over! How can you be afraid of needles?” 

Me: *Pauses again* “That’s not comparable at all.”

I was still upset and anxious and just wanted her to get it over with. Luckily, the numbing was starting to work, the assistant continued to be lovely, and the rest of the procedure was pretty painless, despite the fact that she needed to redo the new filling twice.

When I was nearing the end of my second trimester of pregnancy, I was doing my usual workout and managed to pull the muscle in my groin. It hurt a decent amount, but I figured it would get better in a few days/weeks. It didn’t. I was starting to gain weight rapidly as I progressed through the third trimester. I did groin stretches several times a day, which did help, but the building weight on weaker muscles exacerbated the injury, so recovery was… poor. This was in 2021, so heaven help anyone trying to get an appointment with their general doctor.

Finally, the baby was born, and at last, my injury seemed to start healing properly — but slowly because it had been so long. The baby continued to gain weight (and obviously needed to be carried around!), further exacerbating the weakened muscles.

We went to the GP for our routine eight-week baby check, and I described my problem to the doctor.

She told me to take painkillers, and if it was still hurting, I should make an appointment.

To see a doctor.

That I was currently talking to.

During an appointment.

CONTENT WARNING: This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

I go to donate blood for the first time in a few years, but I am turned down since my iron is too low. I spend the next two days loading up on iron-rich foods and go back to try again. My iron levels are lower. This continues every other day for three weeks. It’s become a personal quest to donate at this point. No amount of meat, spinach, tofu, beans, or supplements can get my iron within the acceptable range.

Finally, one of the phlebotomists looks at my levels for the last three weeks and tells me I should really probably talk to my general practitioner. My general practitioner left the state two years ago, so I go to someone else in the same practice. She sends me off to get a full blood panel done. When the results come in, she calls me to her office.

Doctor: “I can see some abnormalities, but I’m not really qualified to state conclusively what I think is going on. I’m going to call in for a referral to a specialist for you.”

I’m a bit worried at this point, but not overly so. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with no real history of health issues aside from a bout of MRSA when I was a teen.

A few hours go by, and I get a phone call that I recognize as being from the hospital my doctor practices out of. I answer.

Receptionist: “Hello, this is [Major Oncology Office] calling for [My Name]?”

I feel numb. I hadn’t expected a referral to an oncology — cancer — clinic. 

Me: “That’s me.”

Receptionist: “We got a referral for you to come in and meet with [Doctor #2]. We can fit you in [lists several times two weeks out].”

I pick the best time, hang up, and remind myself that nothing is certain at this point.

I’m naturally a very (overly) emotional person and decide I need someone to talk me down. I go to my mother, who has absolutely zero patience for anyone being sick other than herself. You could be bleeding out of your eyes and ears and she’d lecture you on why it was neither a big deal nor worse than anything she had to deal with. I figure she’ll slap some sense into me.

When I go to her house, I sit her down, and tell her what’s been going on the past few weeks and about my upcoming appointment with an oncologist. The color drains from her face and she very uncharacteristically hugs me. She spends the next half-hour listing off all the relatives — whom I never knew about — who died of cancer at about my age. Needless to say, I am far from comforted.

Two weeks go by, and I meet with my oncologist. He turns out NOT to be an oncologist, but rather a hematologist — a blood doctor. He looks over my referral paperwork and then asks me why I’m there. I explain the problems with my iron levels and blood tests. He cuts me off.

Hematologist: “It’s actually your hemoglobin levels. Women naturally have lower hemoglobin levels than men do.”

Me: “That’s why women use a different scale than men for measuring ‘normal’ ranges for hemoglobin, and I’m well below normal by any standards. A woman should have levels just above 12 g/dl. I’m regularly measuring in between 8.5-9.5 g/dl.”

I later learn that blood transfusions are recommended when the level gets to 8.0 g/dl.

He attempts to discreetly roll his eyes.

Hematologist: “Women bleed for a week every month. Of course, they’re going to have low hemoglobin levels.”

Me: “But there is absolutely no correlation between my hemoglobin levels and my menstrual cycle, both of which I have been graphing on a calendar on my phone.”

He sends me for another blood panel. When those results come back, he recommends I take a stool test to check for internal bleeding.

When the results from THAT come back, he says it appears that I probably have an upper GI bleed and need to get a colonoscopy and endoscopy done.

Neither reveals anything out of the ordinary.

By now, nearly six months have gone by. I’m tired all the time, I get dizzy very easily, I have very low blood pressure, and I get frequent muscle cramps.

One day, I’m scrolling through Facebook when a pregnant friend mentions that her pregnancy is causing bad acid reflux and asks for advice. I used to have bad acid reflux myself and a stomach ulcer years ago, so I look at the comments to see if anyone has recommended the extremely common proton-pump inhibitor my original general practitioner put me on years ago before leaving the state.

Several people have recommended it, but one comment thread sticks out: a nurse practitioner friend argues against the proton-pump inhibitor, pointing out several studies showing that it blocks the body’s ability to absorb iron and B12.

I do some more digging online and find out that you’re only supposed to take this medication for up to two weeks. My original doctor told me I would need to take it for the rest of my life and had set up recurrent mail delivery as a result.

I immediately get myself a new doctor with a different practice. I don’t mention my suspicions about the proton-pump inhibitor, but I show him all my blood tests and history regarding my hemoglobin levels. He looks at my general patient files listing the medicines I’m on and immediately tells me my problems are all being caused by the proton-pump inhibitor and I should have been taken off it years ago.

Because not one doctor up to this point had bothered looking at what medications I was on — which their nurses updated in my files every time I visited — I spent nearly eight months of my life getting ridiculous, unnecessary procedures and tests at the cost of well over $3,000 and fearing something was deathly wrong with me.

I filed complaints against the hematologist and my original doctor, but I never heard anything back.

When I was in elementary school, my parents split up. In order to make ends meet, my mother took a new job that required her to leave the house at 5:00 am. Since I was quite stubborn and independent, I simply asked for an alarm clock and proceeded to get myself ready and out of the house on time on my own.

For the most part, this worked well. My mother called our house at the time I needed to be up, we chatted for a few moments, and I got ready and went to school.

When the phone rang one morning, I leaped out of bed. Unfortunately, my nightshirt snagged on the bedpost and I faceplanted onto the floor, chin first. It hurt like h*** and I dashed to the phone crying. 

While talking to my mother about what had happened, I wiped my tears on my purple nightshirt. Some got on my hand, and to my surprise, the liquid was red instead of clear. Since we didn’t have a cordless phone, I told my mother I’d call her back and went to the closest mirror to inspect my face. To my horror, my chin had a gaping cut. After informing my mother about this, I got dressed and waited for her to pick me up and take me to the hospital.

Of course, I needed stitches. Unfortunately for the whole ER, I was terrified of needles, and the doctor tried to give me the anaesthetic in a — to my eyes — gigantic syringe as big as my arm which, due to the nature of the injury, approached my face way too close for comfort. 

After a few minutes of screaming, my mother took me to the hospital shop in order to calm me down. She bought me a small plushie under the condition that I would have to be brave and let the doctor stitch me up.

When we returned to the ER, rinse and repeat the screaming. The doctor was so fed up that she proposed to stitch me up without anaesthetic. Content to be spared the gigantic syringe, I consented.

The doctor spread a cloth over my face and started stitching. I clutched my new plushie and let the doctor stitch me up without fussing, since the cloth prevented me from seeing anything.

Of course, the doctor could have picked up the syringe again instead of the needle. Maybe she was just so fed up that she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible (I wouldn’t blame her) or she was waiting for me to relent and ask for the anaesthetic. But since I was as stubborn as any ten-year-old could be, I got three stitches without anaesthetic, and twenty years later, I still have a small scar on my chin.

I never wore that nightshirt again.

Ever since I was about eight, I have had a very high prescription for my vision. I’m now in my mid-twenties. I have looked into LASIK but am not a candidate, so I’m looking into ICL surgery, where they implant a lens in the eye.

I’m at an appointment with a surgeon to see if it’s something I can have done. After many tests, the surgeon determines that he will have to discuss my case with another surgeon since he has never done the surgery on someone with my prescription.

Assistant #1: “She does have a few questions about the surgery if that’s all right.”

Surgeon: “Eh, let’s not waste our time if I can’t even do the surgery on her.”

I’m a little put off by this. A few days later, I get a call from a different assistant.

Assistant #2: “[Surgeon] talked with the other surgeon, and they’ve agreed they can do the surgery. I’ve scheduled it for [date]. Does that work for you?”

Me: “Er, I had a few questions for the surgeon that I wanted to ask before making any decisions.”

Assistant #2: “I can do that. What questions do you have?”

We go through a few different questions, and these are the ones that make me uncomfortable going through with the surgery.

Me: “How many times has this other surgeon done the surgery on someone with a prescription like mine?”

Assistant #2: “Once.”

Me: “And were there any complications?”

Assistant #2: “There were, but they were resolved. The patient is very happy with the results.”

Me: “What are the risks if I do the surgery?”

Assistant #2: “If they do the wrong sized lens, you could end up with glaucoma that could cause blindness, or you could have retinal detachment. But we can try to resolve any issues that might happen.”

Me: “How much does the surgery cost?”

Assistant #2: “$4,000 per eye.”

Me: “And when is that due?”

Assistant #2: “The entire payment will need to be paid the day before the surgery.”

Me: “Okay, thank you for your time. I will need to discuss this with my husband first, so please cancel the scheduled surgery.”

Assistant #2: “But it’s your eyes.”

Me: “I understand, but I do need to discuss this with him first.”

Assistant #2: “But it’s your eyes.”

Me: “I’m currently a stay-at-home mom, and my husband is the sole provider of our family. We discuss big expenses together before making any discussions.”

Assistant #2: “But it’s your eyes!”

I’m thinking, “No crap, lady, it’s my eyes. I still have to pay $8,000 whether or not the surgeon potentially blinds me or leaves me with major complications.”