Week 1–Blog Post

In this post, I will be discussing the long and exhausting process of being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder in the American biomedical system. When I was younger, I really didn’t have much reason to visit doctors. I rarely had a reason to go, aside from an annual checkup. Now that I have had two children in the American biomedical system, I can say that I have become very familiar with the different ways in which busy doctors will prescribe medications or diagnose illnesses out of convenience. After the birth of my first child, I was constantly having to run back and forth to doctor’s appointments for myself and my child. Appointments that ultimately felt useless, aside from notes on a chart showing that everything met a predetermined marker for growth, development, and in my case, healing. Everything went great during the birth of my child and everything has been great ever since. The doctor’s appointments slowed down as my child got older and now, there is only the need for the annual checkup that involves immunizations and development checks. As for myself, I never really felt the same after giving birth. I repeatedly told my doctor that I felt exhausted all the time, no matter how many hours of sleep I would get. I was also having a few other symptoms I won’t list, but I had listed all of my symptoms multiple times to both the nurse and my doctor. My doctor began to assume that I was depressed and that would explain why I was feeling tired and ‘not myself’. He tried to prescribe me a medication for depression, but I was not comfortable with taking a medication when I did not agree with the diagnosis. He named a couple ways I could try to treat my ‘tired feelings’ without medication and asked me to try his suggestions for three weeks and return for a follow-up.

After three weeks of no relief (and feeling more tired than ever) I returned to my doctor looking for further assistance. He did not seem surprised that his ‘non-medicinal’ suggestions were not efficient, as he was really hoping I would give in and try the suggested prescription. I explained that I did not feel depressed and that I think there is something else going on. He said the only thing left, aside from medicine, is to try doing bloodwork to see if there are any indicators. I got the bloodwork immediately following the appointment and was told they would have my results within 48 hours. The following day, I got a phone call from my doctor asking for me to come in for a follow-up appointment to discuss the results. The problem with that was that my doctor was so busy, I could not get an appointment with him for another two weeks. After anxiously waiting for my doctor’s appointment, it was determined that my antibodies were extremely high and they wanted me to see an endocrinologist as soon as possible. The specialist I was referred to did not call me for an appointment for another week. I had to schedule the appointment for the following week.

The specialist appointment was extremely quick. Within fifteen minutes I learned that I had Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune disorder that affects the thyroid (explaining why I was so exhausted and all of my other symptoms). Following this appointment, I would have to make multiple rounds of blood draws, medication adjustments, and dietary changes. I still think back to my original appointment with my primary doctor who was not fully listening to my symptoms and worries because he was already convinced I was suffering from post-partum depression. Being tired is a normal occurrence for a new mom and my guess is that my doctor was not really taking me serious. Having a second child and many different medical ailments in my family, I have come to learn that doctors are human. They are extremely busy, hear many patients relay their ailments all day long, and there is plenty of room for mistakes. Medicine has come a long way and there is almost always some form of medication that can be taken to soothe a patient’s symptoms. It just worries me with how easy it is for doctors to give out medications for any and everything without wanting to take the time to fully listen to their patient to make sure they are taking all of the necessary precautions to determine the root cause of their patient’s ailments.

4 thoughts on “Week 1–Blog Post

  1. Angela,

    Your personal experience immediately reminded me of one of the downfalls of biomedicine that we learned about this week–it’s not so good at solving problems that have multiple factors. Although postpartum depression seemed like the most logical explanation given the fact that you had just given birth, jumping to that conclusion without listening to all of your symptoms would have had you medicating for an illness you did not have while your existing condition continued or worsened. This is actually not the first time I have heard about the misdiagnosing of an autoimmune disease. I am glad that you were able to advocate for yourself, and find answers and help. While you declined taking medication for an illness you did not believe you had, others in your position might have put their faith in their doctors and biomedicine and given it a try. It is scary to realize the power in knowledge the institution of medicine has, but it is even scarier to understand that this knowledge is not an absolute and is not always correct.

    Thank you for sharing your story with us.

  2. Hi Angela,

    Thank you for sharing your story. I completely agree with your statement that doctors should determine the root cause of a person’s disorder or disease before prescribing them medicine. My aunt was also diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder recently. She was getting very tired and was also experiencing frequent fevers. She went to the doctor and prescribed something generic for her symptoms, but her symptoms did not go away. She kept going back to the doctor, where they finally did a blood test and she was finally diagnosed with lupus. Lupus is a hard disease to diagnose because different people experience different symptoms and the symptoms often mimic other diseases. If doctors took the time to completely and fully listen to their patients problems and not jump to conclusions the diagnosis they make would be much more accurate and the medication they prescribe would provide much better relief. Because doctors are not taking the time to listen, they might be prescribing medication that would not work or is not needed. The lack of time spent with patients could be a result of the shortage of doctors in today’s health care system. This would make it difficult for doctors to spend enough time with patients to fully understand their problem.

  3. I’m sorry that you had that experience with your doctor, but sadly your story is not uncommon. As we will be discussing later, it is more common for women to experience this type of thing compared to men and it can lead to severe consequences, including death. I’m glad you were able to advocate yourself and were able to get diagnosed and treated properly.
    As for the medical checkups with the children, that is really interesting and it’s currently something that I’m reading about outside of class. It’s very interesting, and a lot of it is about biopolitics or controlling of bodies, particularly the bodies of women.

  4. Hey,
    This experience is very common for doctors in the United States. The doctors usually prescribe general/same prescriptions for common causes. Sometimes different sickness and illness can share common symptoms as other infections or illness so it’s sometimes hard for doctors to 100% diagnose someone disorder or sickness but I agree with the comments a doctor should always find the root cause before prescribing any medication. A doctor goes through several patients per day so they are used to hearing the common symptoms, for example, when I was younger the main doctor would only come in for a few minutes and then prescribe me medication from the information he gather in just 5 minutes. I would always suggest doing so research on your symptoms and also on the type of medication one is prescribed.

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