Are Doctors Blinded by Their Patients’ Age & Gender?

How I’ve struggled to be seen and heard by my doctors since I turned 40

Y.L. Wolfe
An Injustice!
Published in
8 min readMar 12, 2020

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Photo by EVG photos from Pexels

Despite the fact that I’d just gone through a series of major losses in my late thirties, I was feeling more physically healthy than I ever had in my life. I expected my new gynecologist to be thrilled with my health improvements. Instead, I found myself shocked by her comments and recommendations.

She suggested that I come back in a month to do a full blood panel, mammogram, urine tests, and other scans. When I asked why, she said it was because I was almost 40 the human body becomes extremely vulnerable to disease after 40.

I was absolutely stunned by her perspective. I acknowledge that our bodies change as we age and that each stage in life comes with biological transformations and vulnerabilities, but I do not believe that aging is a guarantee that we will get sicker or weaker.

When we moved on to talk about my menstrual cycle, I made the mistake of mentioning that I might still want to have a baby. It took her a long time to respond to that, and she encouraged me to reconsider my decision and to at least make sure I didn’t take any action until I had had all the tests and scans she had recommended, plus several more. She said it was incredibly dangerous to…

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Gender-curious, solosexual, perimenopausal, childless crone-in-training. | Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gleDcD | Email: welcome@yaelwolfe.com