The mystery of medicine

I used to clutch at my abdoman when the quiet, subtle cramping would come and think, I feel like I'm hemmorhaging. I would then squeeze this tought up tight and put it in the pile of crazy hypochondriac thinking. Duh. I'm obviously not hemmorhaging. Nothing's coming out. Nother ever does. I had been waiting every time for some crazy gush of blood, some sort of collapse on the floor to justify the loss and grind in my belly. In the absence of anything so outward and confirming, I assumed that I was neurotic and looking for attention: Munchausen Syndrome, lite. This embarrasssed me.

I now know that I was, in fact, bleeding internally. I was bleeding, and I knew it without having any concept of the pathology behind that fact. I just knew.

As a student nurse, I am often balancing a patient's understanding with what I know to be true. I know things, in the academic sense, which to me are incontrovertible and crucial to a patient's care. But I also know that patients, like me, are experts about themselves in ways that I can't ever touch. They speak the language of their own completely unique being, and I don't. I need the patient to be my translator. I wish more doctors treated from this perspective.

I think women are most vulnerable to this rift in medicine between what the doctor knows, and what the patient feels. Women's heart attacks went misdiagnosed for years because we present so differently than men. And because we so often describe ourselves in sensing and emotional terms, we are treated for conditions of hyper-sensitivity and unbalanced emotions; even when that sense and feeling is in fact chillingly accurate at diagnosis.

Medicine needs to start looking at women on their own terms. Otherwise, more and more of us will cease to trust or have any respect for the medical system. I am one of the lucky ones. I have ten years of lay experience in alternative medicine and almost 4 years of training in anatomy and allopathic medicine. I navigate the terrain of my own illness with an amazing toolbox. I want this safety net for all women, and I want us to start studying women's illness and treatment so that we can learn the map of feminine medicine.