Medical Gaslighting: How physicians fail a significant portion of the population

My body betrayed me. But so did the medical team charged with caring for me.

I stepped on the scale at my doctor’s office and she says, “No way are you’re 205 pounds. No way.”

I remain silent. I find silence platinum when I have nothing nice to add to the conversation.

“No way,” she repeats as she adjusts the dial and weights. She checks to see if the scale is plugged in. She makes me get on and off several times. She checks to see if my pants are made of lead or if I have on army boots. “No way. You look about 140 pounds.”

“Yup. I know.”

“You’re morbidly obese.”

“When did that happen? I was a Victoria’s Secret underwear model when I walked in here.”

“Christy. I’m serious. You’re morbidly obese.” She repeats statements as if it will magically erase the obvious.

“Sure am.”

“You have to cut out junk food.”

I stare at her. My doctor of ten years knows me. We’re friends on social media, for god’s sake. “You know I don’t eat crap. I home-make everything. And I don’t eat junk or sugar. In fact, you know I eat 800–1400 calories of veggies, protein, and healthy fats every day. You also know I run. And do yoga.”

“No way,” she says again, figuring she can cast away an impossible truth. “Are you accurately diarying your exercise and food consumption?”

Bitch, please. Yes, I’m morbidly obese. And I had no idea why. I said, “Look at the chart, Kim. I’ve gained 60 pounds in three months. I also noticed my eyes have been cloudy. And my hair is brittle. The worst is the stomach pain. I still have that pain right under my sternum.”

“It’s probably stress.”

“It’s not stress, Kim. Come on. My stress level is the same as it was a year ago — in fact, it’s less.”

This has been the discussion over three appointments in the past six months. A disturbing weight gain, severe pain, exhaustion. I become obsessed with the food I eat. I up calories. I reduce calories. I try keto. I try paleo. I try Mediterranean. I work out more and more. I work out less. I cry a lot. I add more meditation sessions. Nothing helps.

My doctor finally determines I need to see a gastroenterologist, who says he’s concerned. He hints at the Big C.

I ask, “Wouldn’t I lose weight if I had cancer?”

He seems to lurch at the word, cancer. Like I’ve invoked Voldemort. A doctor who is more comfortable saying “Big C” than “cancer” is better suited to an evening television drama than real-life.

He says, “Yes….” and schedules me for an upper and lower endoscopy and colonoscopy. Which are scheduled at his earliest opening: 4 months later.

A year has gone by. A year of my raising concerns to my doctor and specialists. A year to have this upper and lower endoscopy and colonoscopy. I go home with an all clear report and severe pain. This is a pain I imagine akin to a broadsword in the gut. I collapse on the living room floor and my son demands I agree to go to the hospital.

I think, as the emergency room doctor tells me my liver is failing: A year to almost the day when I rush from my house at 1 in the morning to face the grim reaper. All these doctors are supposed to protect me from the scythe carrying cloaked granter of death.

Here I am in the emergency room being told surgery or death.

MEDICAL GASLIGHTING

Medical gaslighting is when doctors ignore patients’ symptoms or deny a patient tests. The term gaslighting is from the 1944 film Gaslight, staring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the film, the husband sets up his wife so she believes that she is going insane. Once he can commit her, he can steal her inherited wealth (sorry, spoiler alert). (Great film, by the way. Ingrid is my love.)

And that’s just how medical gaslighting feels. You know your body. You know something is wrong. But your diagnosis is “don’t be so histrionic.” “You’re just emotional.” “Take a vacation.” “You’re exaggerating.” “You have to face that you are overweight.” It’s not physical. You are mentally ill.

MARCIE

Aside from my own tale of death, I recently heard a niece of a close friend presented at the hospital with a severe skin condition. The rash was spreading, and she had infection lines running up her arm. The emergency room staff, however, would not treat her because the twenty-year-old tracks on her arm led them to decide she was a drug user. Her protests of having been clear for a lifetime were ignored. She faced her grim reaper visit several days later when the infection spread to her heart. She’s alive but forever weakened.

EMMA

Emma was suffering from stomach discomfort, double vision, and a wonky eye. The doctors on whom she relied gave her no particular diagnosis and sent her home with steroids. No one cared that the stomach discomfort and vomiting were an acute problem for months prior to her asking for treatment. She eventually learned she had an autoimmune disorder and had suffered a stroke!

CHLOE

Sought help when she suffered from a persistent cough. After five months being told “it’s just a cough,” her sudden weight loss made her demand a damn x-ray. Only then did they diagnose her Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Five months.

MARGINALIZED

Medical literature is based on a white man’s symptoms. Screw the other 5.5 billion people on this planet who are non-male and/or non-white. The medicos have little to consult when a woman or non-white person presents with symptoms.

This is especially dangerous with heart disease where women’s symptoms are vastly different. Women are more than twice likely to get a “you have anxiety, honey” diagnosis. The bias is pervasive.

Black people, due to socioeconomic bias, receive lower-quality healthcare and are often deemed uncooperative. And (I sat in dumb silence after researching this crap), over half of white medical students endorse beliefs that Black people are less sensitive to pain — so they rate pain complaints lower on the pain scale.

FAT SHAMING

If you’re fat, you’re done for.

74% of medical students have an implicit weight bias — unaware that they can’t see beyond the number on the scale. My doctor is a perfect example. She kept insisting I was morbidly obese and had to stop drinking soda.

I have not had soda since 2012. Not once.

And once review of my food journal reveals a lack of caloric or dietary reasons for my symptoms, my doctor, like others, insists I need mental treatment for depression or anxiety.

You know what makes me anxious? Educated people on whom I rely who fail me.

DEATH’S DOOR

My weight gain had nothing to do with diet or lack of exercise.

Over the course of three months, I gained 60 pounds. 60. No change in diet. Less stressful lifestyle. Regular exercise — which was becoming more difficult by the hour. The pain under my sternum was not stress.

The night after my upper endoscopy and colonoscopy — which were unremarkable — my son found me on the floor writhing and screaming in pain. He rushed me to the emergency room, where they diagnosed me with liver failure.

Apparently, my bile duct was so clogged, my liver was failing. And the gall stones in my gall bladder were so numerous and large that the organ was rotting in my body.

The emergency room doctor was stern: “You need surgery — several, actually. Or you will not live out the week.”

THE CURE

I’m alive.

My amazing surgeons and the hospital staff saved my life. Not all doctors are inept. But here’s the thing: I’m 54 years old and have struggled for six years to shed these 60 pounds. Living without a gall bladder and with perimenopause, the task is very difficult.

If I had been diagnosed early and fairly, the mystery pain would have been addressed months before the weight gain happened. Remember, I had visited my doctor for months with the strange pain before I gained the weight. Now, I get to face all the ails associated with obesity.

I considered suing. The legal-medical advice: The doctors, including my primary physician, were following protocol. The pain under my sternum is atypical for gall stones.

Without a route to rectify, I continue to work out, eat healthy — and will never again trust a doctor’s sole opinion.

I suggest you, too, heal thyself.

Find a new provider if you do not feel heard. Kim is no longer my doctor. I’ve lost all respect for her. My new doctor listens to me and is helping me get my health back. She’s pretty amazing, actually.

Trust your own self-evaluation. You have lived in that body your whole life — you know when it feels different or wrong.

And, remember: Your doctor works for you. You pay him or her. Do not be intimidated because some human has a different education than you do. Stand up. Demand answers in common words. And ask all the questions you want.

And if anyone tells you the pain in your sternum — or anywhere else — is stress just say it: Don’t try to gaslight me, Doc.