Aston sought medical help after her symptoms—which included severe migraines, abdominal pain, joint dislocations, easy bruising, iron deficiency, fainting, tachycardia, and multiple injuries—began in 2015, per the New Zealand Herald. She was referred to Auckland Hospital, where a doctor accused her of causing her own illness. Because of his accusations, Aston was placed on psychiatric watch.
Research suggests women are often much more likely to be misdiagnosed than men. A 2009 study of patients with heart disease symptoms found 31.3 per cent of middle-aged women “received a mental health condition as the most certain diagnosis”, compared to just 15.6 per cent of their male counterparts. Additionally, a 2020 study found that as many as 75.2 per cent of patients with endometriosis—a painful disorder that affects the tissue of the uterus—had been misdiagnosed after they started experiencing endometriosis symptoms. Among those women, nearly 50 per cent were told they had a “mental health problem”.
As someone currently wasting away from a chronic illness my doctors haven’t been able to diagnose I feel like a dick for even pointing this out, but obesity is a risk factor for many different types of cancer so it isn’t always as simple as that sometimes. I’m so sorry for the process your friend is going through though, I hate the medical system with a flaming passion because of the demeaning experiences I’ve had with specialists. I just wanted to point that out in case anyone reading thinks obesity and cancer aren’t related at all, it’s just never that cut and dry with health problems a lot of the time so people need to be wary of certain risk factors they may have.
Again, im so sorry for your friend and I hope you don’t think this comment came from a malicious place. I can link you some sources if you’d like but it’s been pretty well established in the literature through the years that obesity is the primary causative factor in up to 20 percent of certain types of cancers. Sending positive thoughts to you and your friend, and I’m sorry if my comment comes across in a way I didn’t intend for it to.
Editing to say that my comment was more of a PSA and I wasn’t directing it at your friend specifically.
Editing my comment one more time to say anyone that gets imaging done, always ALWAYS get a second opinion from a different radiologist no matter what the results say. I can’t even explain to you how incompetent snd lazy some of them are so the only way to ensure you didn’t get one that skimmed over your images in 2 minutes (like I literally had happen once, they left the log times in from when he accessed it to when he wrote his “report” and it was I shit you not it was less than 5 minutes, and it was far from simple imaging so he was just a heartless bastard).