Genius Doctors

From: More than You Wanted To Know About My Heart Attack (edited)

Two doctors and an emergency room visit later, I still had no answer to why I was shaking, short of breath and could barely walk at times from weakness.

One emergency room doctor refused to look at my abnormal EKG when I came to the hospital; he was too busy dealing with a female coke addict and decided that I was another example of an anxious woman having a panic attack.

I finally persuaded my regular doctor to quit prescibing me Effexor (an antidepressant) and to look at my heart. He finally sent me for tests. He called back and told me to get to the hospital.

No, I did not sue the doctors. I wanted to but a lawsuit was too stressful for me.

I did get a call from the head of an ER department that turned me away and told him rather than sue him, I wanted him to give a lecture to the doctor who treated me badly and his staff on women's heart health.

Although I was too sick to attend, he called back to confirm that he did it. I can only imagine the next time a woman comes to that ER with shortness of breath,etc. Hopefully the doctors will remember that lecture.

NOTE: Bernard said in a comment:

I have been a practicing internist for 28 years and I have never seen a 37 year old woman with a myocardial infarction.

That's not to say that your treatment was proper in the ER's - it seems not to have been. But nor is it correct to think that this is an everyday sort of thing.

It's just not true that premenopausal woment have much risk of heart attacks.

Little comfort to you, I'm sure, that your condition is a rare one. But it is certainly part of the reason you were not treated well.