In a viral TikTok video, a woman shares how she was dangerously misdiagnosed at the ER because doctors didn’t believe her—twice
Any person (and especially any woman) who has tried to advocate for themselves at the doctor’s office knows what a frustrating experience it can be. Finding a doctor who not only listens to your concerns but also takes them seriously can feel impossible. That was shown all too clearly by a woman’s viral TikTok, where she documented going to the ER for suspected appendicitis (TWICE!) only to have two separate doctors not believe her.
“In today’s episode of, ‘doctors should believe women,’ I went to the doctor 3 weeks ago with extreme right side abdominal pain and my doctor sent me to the emergency room with suspected appendicitis,” Amanda Buschelman started her story. Sounds pretty normal so far, right?
@amandabman #appendix #beleivewomen #notanxious #inpain
♬ original sound – Amanda Buschelman
Except when Buschelman got to the ER, a doctor there told her she didn’t have appendicitis, she had an ovarian cyst. That diagnosis will make sense to anyone who’s ever had an ovarian cyst—those suckers hurt! But for Buschelman, there was just one problem.
“I don’t have any ovaries, and I haven’t had any for 10 years,” she said she told the doctor. That seems like something a woman would know about her own body, right? Except the ER doctor didn’t believe her. He insisted she was suffering from an ovarian cyst, explained that she probably only had her uterus removed and not her ovaries, and sent her home. To make the whole situation even more infuriating, Buschelman looked up her chart afterward to see that the doctor who didn’t believe her also noted that she was “anxious presenting.” If you feel like you could scream right now, you’re not alone.
Women’s pain has been a sticky thing in medicine for a long, long time. Studies have shown that women regularly suffer more pain than men without any medical intervention because doctors simply don’t take women’s claims about pain seriously. And on the subject of how Buschelman’s doctor called her “anxious presenting?” A recent study showed that women who presented to ERs with chest pain were twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness than men. Yikes.
After being sent home from the ER, Buschelman suffered for a few days, then went back because her doctor still suspected she had appendicitis. She saw a new doctor, who once again diagnosed her with an ovarian cyst. After looking up her records and seeing that she definitely had her ovaries removed, they finally diagnosed her with a tumor, and when Buschelman had surgery to remove it, well, surprise.
“Guess what,” she said. “I had appendicitis the whole time, and I had my appendix taken out along with that little tumor that isn’t an ovary!”
Doctors, believe women. Full stop.
Need some fresh ideas?
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