THREAD
Friday morning a man told me to stop talking about my illness. He said it was "attention seeking." So I've started to write a column about this, because this is a common attack hurled at women raising issues related to women's health --it is meant to silence us.

Thursday Kamala Harris proposed legislation to address fibroids. I've written about fibroids before. Two close friends developed uterine cancer related to theirs. 1 in 4 women of reproductive age have them;they can interfere with fertility. 80% of post-menopausal women have them.

In 2015 I had a pulmonary embolism. I was working to finish a book, got a blood clot I thought was just leg cramps, spent 3wks in ICU recovering. I wrote about it later because as I read up to understand my lungs going forward I found PEs are a leading cause of death for women.

When I had my cardiac event July 20, which was something called "broken heart syndrome" and was subsequently dxd with congestive heart failure, I wrote about it as a warning to others, as it is impacting many women who have had #COVID. But separately affects millions of all ages.

If you have a platform, you have a responsibility to use it to educate people. Women are badly treated by the medical system: our pain and symptoms are routinely ignored and dismissed. Black women are dying in and after childbirth in America at a rate equal to subSaharan Africa.

In 2016 I was sent to hospital for severe pain. I was slowly bleeding to death. But although I spent 4days in hospital--being refused pain meds--and tests showed a bleed, my complaints were ignored and I was sent home and told to "walk it off." 12hrs later I was paralyzed.

The bleed had not stopped as the first hospital claimed. It continued until it blocked all the nerves to my legs. The 1st doctor could have saved me from paralysis but because she refused to listen to my description of worsening pain and other red flags, I was paralyzed.

These are common occurrences. Most drugs women are prescribed are only tested on men. Our tales of illness & especially pain are ignored. Many of suffer and some of us die. This is true for all women, but worst for Black, queer and trans women who are treated worst by the system.

I would add to this that Black women are routinely sent home from ERs as "drug-seeking" when in fact they are in the early stages of a heart attack. There have been several cases of this publicized recently. You have to fight for yourself and others.

The catastrophic bleed I had was caused by a drug I was given that had never been tested on women.