30 Women Share Medical Horror Stories Where They Had To Endure Pain For No Good Reason, And It’s Scary How Common The Situation Is

If you're a man, it sounds silly that something as universal as healthcare can be subjective. But when it comes to pain, women are treated differently than we are.

One study, for example, found that women in the emergency department who report having acute pain are less likely to be given opioid painkillers (the most effective type) than men. After they are prescribed, women also have to wait longer to receive them.

To get a better understanding of the scope of this problem, Redditor u/Ancient-Abs published a post, asking: "Why are many gynecological procedures done without pain medicine?" and sharing their own experience having an IUD inserted.

The story inspired many other women to share the nightmares they have gone through as well, shedding light on this difficult topic we don't talk about enough.

Image credits: presidenciamx (not the actual photo)

u/Ancient-Abs told Bored Panda they discovered this "when I myself underwent an IUD insertion and then had significant pain during and afterwards. My doctor acted like I was an exception and that most women felt nothing, but as I asked my friends, I discovered that multiple women have pain and that numbing the area is possible but doctors don't do it."

The Redditor thinks this disparity between men and women is "a result of systemic misogyny that was institutionalized in the Middle Ages in medicine to avoid giving women pain control during birth because they felt that women had the curse of Eve on them and they were fulfilling God's plan by letting them suffer."

"In modern medicine, this practice has been passed down but relabeled as women don't feel as much pain as men or that they are overreacting because the cervix doesn't have nerves," u/Ancient-Abs added. "It does and you can numb them. People just choose not to."

Image credits: Ancient-Abs

In fact, this whole branch of medicine has grown out of a rotten trunk. Consider the "father of modern gynecology," James Marion Sims. He developed pioneering tools and surgical techniques related to women's reproductive health. In 1876, he was even 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 US.

But Sims conducted his research on enslaved Black women without anesthesia, and medical ethicists as well as historians claim that his use of medical test subjects falls into a long, ethically bereft history that includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Henrietta Lacks. According to critics, Sims cared more about the experiments than providing therapeutic treatment, and that he caused unimaginable suffering by operating under the racist notion that Black people did not feel pain.

After going through all the replies under their post, u/Ancient-Abs took away that "if we want to change this, we have to write the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in order to have them require doctors and doctors in training to numb these areas before procedures." If you want to stay on this topic, keep an eye out for a letter template the Redditor will draft that people can sign and send to this group.

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I started bleeding when pregnant with my first and went to see my OBGYN at the hospital. She looked and said there were polyps on my cervix. She then told me to just hold the nurse's hand and pick a spot on the ceiling, and she’ll cut them out real quick.

I honestly never thought to ask for any kind of pain meds for any procedure like this before. WTF is wrong with me and other women? We’ve been so brainwashed to believe that 'it’s just a pinch' and now drive home and go make dinner.

I’m a medical professional and had to read a thread on Reddit to realize I need to advocate for myself, and I don’t need to be in pain during gyno procedures.

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30 Women Share Medical Horror Stories Where They Had To Endure Pain For No Good Reason, And It’s Scary How Common The Situation Is

Rokas Laurinavičius

Rokas Laurinavičius

Justinas Keturka

Justinas Keturka