Imagine this: you just turned 18 and it’s your first year at college. You are away from home and your family for the very first time. It’s wonderful and freeing, isn’t it?
Until it’s not, trust me, I felt the same way at first. Everything was fine one moment and the next, I was experiencing intense and heavy vaginal bleeding. Originally, I just thought it was an irregular period. I decided to visit the doctor when it had been over a month of continuous heavy bleeding.
So there I was, at the doctor’s, scared and confused. The only explanation they could offer was that sometimes Nexplanon (a rod implant form of birth control) just does that. Their only solution? They told me I could take birth control pills alongside my Nexplanon to maybe control the bleeding. Which was basically their way of saying, “We don’t know, but here’s some more hormones.”
I left with more questions than answers; they never ran any tests or checked up on me with any sort of equipment. The charge was over $200. $200 for them to tell me they didn’t know, offer the pill on top of my other birth control and send me home. The bleeding continued for three months.
I had a similar experience this past summer when I visited urgent care and the emergency room. I walked in and told them I was experiencing abnormal bleeding. The first thing they made me do at the urgent care was take a pregnancy test. While I waited for the results, the male physician I was seeing felt around my stomach, trying to identify any sort of pain.
His hands were cold. I was anxious about so many things, not just pregnancy. It was with his hands still on my stomach that he told me that I was making him miss his OBGYN days.
Now I can’t imagine in what world he would’ve thought that, that was the best thing to say. I was a scared 20-year-old, bleeding, in pain and anxiously waiting for results.
I wasn’t pregnant, and they had no idea what was wrong. The only test they ran was a pregnancy test and a physical; they sent me to the local emergency room instead.
So I walked for almost an hour to reach the emergency room, still bleeding, still in pain and still having no idea what was wrong with me.
When I got to emergency care, I was seen very quickly by a nurse who was very nice and understanding. Before she left, she assured me the doctor would be in soon. I ended up waiting over an hour and a half before he came to see me. When the doctor finally did arrive, he didn’t bother to ask me anything. He just ordered me a pregnancy test.
It didn’t matter that I told him I just took one at the urgent care. It wasn’t until my nurse came back in and explained to him the same thing I had just tried to explain that I had already taken a pregnancy test and I wasn’t pregnant, that he listened.
They ran a blood test instead and I waited another hour, where the results gave no answers. They checked me out another hour later, with no answers and told me to come back if I was still bleeding in two weeks.
It isn’t just me; I have heard so many other horror stories from women regarding reproductive health. Especially when it comes to birth control, it just seems that instead of actually looking into women’s issues, they would rather prescribe more birth control or insist that the only issue must be that a woman is pregnant.
In a study done by the Victoria State Government in 2024, it was found that one in three women who visited the hospital had felt dismissed by doctors. Young women are being taught how to stand up for themselves regarding their own health issues. While one can argue that’s a great skill to learn, I argue that women shouldn’t have to feel this way, especially when it comes to their own health.
The healthcare system is failing women. We are so far behind in treating women’s health issues and it’s time we stop making excuses.
I promise you, the last thing a woman wants to do is take more hormones and pee in another cup for no answers.