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Diagnosis female

I think every female has experienced it to some degree- being diagnosed as being female. Even now in the year 2022, a male and a female could go to the doctors office with the exact same complaints and the male is more likely to be taken seriously quicker. Gender bias exists everywhere, but in my experienced, gender biased in the health care system can be one of the most detrimental; ultimately having the potential to lead to little quality of life, and even death. I have a several chronic illnesses including a genetic condition. It took 21 years to be diagnosed with one of my illnesses and 32 to be diagnosed with the genetic condition that causes all of my other chronic illnesses. My first diagnosis at 21 was dysautonomia. I started showing severe symptoms 7 months prior to my diagnosis. So for 7 months, I was going from doctor to doctor and test to test. I know from the outside some people might think this is a long time, but in all reality it takes almost 6 years for people to be diagnosed on average. So, 7 months was actually quite quick. Why does it take so long for us to get diagnosed? Well you see dysautonomia disproportionately effects women more than men. And while I hadn’t gone so far as to research why that might be, I think it stands to reason that this gender bias could be at play. We get diagnosed as being female. It’s all in our heads. It’s anxiety and depression. It’s our hormones. This is also, I think, at least partly related to why a lot of people in the chronic illnesses community reject any notion that they might also have a mental health issues. I get it, I really do. As women e deserve to be heard, we deserve to be taken seriously, and we deserve to get appropriate and timely treatment. But I also want to take the time to acknowledge that mental health is important in chronic illnesses. Because whether or not we want to pretend that it doesn’t, our mental health effects our physical health and our physical health effects our mental health. 

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