Medical neglect causing disabilities is much harder to prove than you would think. There is always the benefit of the doubt that doctors are assumed to have tried their best to treat you and that it was a ‘coincidence’ that you happen to have acquired a chronic condition.

There’s nothing unusual about women with abdominal pain being sent home from the ER untreated and berated for coming here ‘for no reason’. Women are systemically denied treatment from the ER because every form of abdominal pain is downplayed to being ‘just female abdominal pain’. I had severe abdominal pain and spotting when I went to the ER on a Friday evening. I had to wait 4 excruciating hours after an initial screening. Andoctor was finally available and I tried to explain that this wasn’t just a normal period and begged to have it checked out, but he doctor wouldn’t hear it. He sent me home with ibuprofen and Tylenol and told me not to come back unless it was an emergency.

The OTC meds did jack shit and I already told the doctor I tried ibuprofen before coming. I was left to stew for 3 days, crying, in excruciating pain, and vomiting until I was able to see urgent care on Monday. Those 3 days were the most painful days of my life at the time. At which point I was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic ruptured ovarian cyst through ultrasound that was 3.5 inches in diameter. I was sent in for laparoscopic surgery to remove the cyst. I though that would be the end of it, but that was just the beginning.

I have spoken to my PCP, rheumatologist, and pain therapist about this, and it was universally agreed that the 3 days of neglect and severe pain was a significant contributor to fibromyalgia. Had I been immediately treated, there was a good chance that I may not have ended up permanently in pain. But there is no way to prove it. Any doctor could just say that I would have gotten it anyway.

The ER experience and the pain was beyond traumatizing, but the best part is that this is just the first one. You see, once you have fibromyalgia nothing you ever say in the ER will be believed anymore. The next two times I went to the ER, once for vomiting 24 hours straight and not keeping any fluids down, and once for severe full body pain and a 105F fever, I would be met when even more disdain and disbelief than before. Both times I was told by the advice nurse to go to the ER, and both times I would be eye rolled or reprimanded by at least one person. Keep in mind that I have already had fibromyalgia at this point, and each time I visited the ER it was under severe pain. And each time I regret mentioning fibromyalgia at all because I could immediately tell the change in tone and the insinuations of how I was ‘one of those’ implying that I am a drug seeker. I had to beg everytime to be treated and to be taken seriously which was immensely difficult to do when I was already delirious from pain.

These people don’t know what pain is like with this condition or that how many of us want to kill ourselves because we can’t handle the pain and stigma anymore. I’m not telling people about this because I have some personal vendetta, I’m trying to warn people to take everything ER staff say with a grain of salt because ER doctors are human and humans are not immune to implicit biases, and medical misjudgments are often made at the expense of patients who don’t fit their preferred demographic.

I think you are the one misunderstanding here. The medical neglect during my ER visit is what caused my disability. I’m not asking to be treated for chronic pain at the ER, I’m asking to be treated so that I would not have become disabled.

Good for you. When I had migraines, I was in so much pain I repeatedly banged my head onto the wall until it was bleeding and then kept going until I was too tired. Then I would sit there and cry silently because my vocal cords were spent and breathing made my head hurt, until I reached postdrome.

I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. If you think this is a pain tolerance issue, I don’t think you know how pain works. Consider this, people experience pain subjectively and you can’t ‘see’ how much pain they are in because it’s not measureable by any metric, let alone facial expression. The 1-10 pain assessment chart is the biggest joke in the chronic pain community.

That’s a shame. Under disability law, permanent disability is legally defined as a loss of mental or physical function to the point of significantly reducing one’s ability to work or perform daily activities for an indefinite period.

It’s ironic that medical disability considers the loss of a limb as a permanent disability but not permanent pain and suffering, because I’d gladly trade my leg to know what it’s like not to be in pain again and to be treated like a person with a visible disability.

Permanently disability is exactly what happened to me and so many others when the ER refused to do anything because our pain is not taken seriously. The crux of the issue here is that you cannot ‘see’ how much pain someone is in and come to a conclusion how pressing their need for medical attention is without further investigation. I’m not asking ER staff to provide treatment beyond what they are supposed to, I’m asking ER staff to provide treatment of what they are supposed to.

The problem is that what constitutes as a medical emergency isn’t dictated by patient’s pain or symptoms, it’s dictated by the medically unsubstantiated biases and preconceptions of medical professionals because patients are presumed drug seeking to be and unreliable witnesses to their own bodies even with clear documentation of prior medical conditions.

I’m sorry you had to deal with that awful guy. Abuse of staff isn’t something that you should tolerate, nor am I asking you to. All I ask is that patients are not profiled as this guy until they have proven otherwise.

This is a systemic issue, not something that you’re expected to fix alone. I’m not blaming you for all the failings of a medical system that is understaffed, underpaid, and overcharged by insurance companies. I’m just asking that people who have suffered at the ER before be heard and believed. I have tried countless times explaining the extent of this systemic issue to medical professionals, and was met with skepticism and outright disbelief about the magnitude of this issue. The many anecdotal experiences from ER visit should give an idea of how common this is among ER visitors.

Yes, it’s true that both sides are making assumptions here. However, patient assumptions that ER staff are capable of causing harm are there to keep themselves safe, and don’t turn them into abusive patients. Discriminatory assumptions made by ER staff can turn them into abusive staff.

The presumption that every patient is someone who fakes an overdose until proven otherwise is precisely why so many people in this threat is suffering. We aren’t asking you to serve narcan on a silver platter to people who fakes an overdose. We’re just asking to be treated as humans, with empathy, without preconceptions about who we are or why we are at the ER based on our skin color, sex, age, and chronic medical conditions.

Trust us, we know what it’s like to feel demoralized at the ER. I’ve had enough close calls of neglecting life threatening conditions, enough of ER staff laughing off my pain, enough ER staff deliberately manhandling me and hurting my tender points to prove I’m ‘overreacting’, enough of waiting 6 hours only to be sent home with nothing and in more pain than I was to begin with, enough of being left to cry in pain for hours at the ER and being ridiculed for it. Many of us are demoralized to the point of fearing the ER and avoiding it even under life threatening circumstances, because going through another ER experience might be the tipping point to actually kill ourselves.

There is only so much suffering, pain, and psychological torture the human mind can endure. Most people in the ER have no idea how much chronic pain sufferers have at stake when going to the ER. I have had ER visits that left me more broken than being sexually assaulted as a teen. I trusted doctors, I trusted the hospital, and I trusted that I was in a safe space. Being painfully jabbed, mocked, laughed at, and told im lying and drug seeking were the last things I was expecting. Nothing will repair this breach of trust, because the stakes are too high. I cannot gamble away my physical and mental health for the sake of improving moral in ER staff. For you, at worse you become disillusioned with your career. For me, it’s my life that I’m risking.

You speak like someone with no conception of what pain is like outside of your own narrow experiences.

Trust me, lots of us out there would trade being meat crayoned 10 times over to get rid of our painful conditions. You can’t compare other people’s pain to your own if you haven’t experienced what they have. Even then, that’s not an excuse to deny people human pain treatment.

The problem here is that doctors would rather let 9 innocent people suffer to punish 1 drug seeker. You can’t judge how much pain is in by how someone ‘looks’. There is no ‘look’ to pain, especially in people chronic pain sufferers who have mastered the art of suffering unendingly without writhing on the floor because that’s not an option while going out in public.

I have been permanently in pain for 4 years, to the point where I have forgotten what painlessness feels like. Everyday, I wake up to a body that felt like it was sunburned for hours, fell down 3 flights of stairs, and ran 10 miles after. Everything fucking hurts and the smallest bump onto furniture feels like being stabbed with a knife. And yet, I go to the grocery store holding every whimper and tear in because I can’t shop if I’m busy writhing in pain. People see me and think I ‘look fine’ and have no idea the suicidal levels of suffering that come with invisible disabilities. Please don’t be one of them.