Metro UK writer Hattie Gladwell recently penned a candid, heartbreaking essay about how her dismissal as a naive girl by doctors irrevocably damaged her body. Her story serves as an important lesson to young women: Listen to your body. You know it better than anyone else.
“If doctors had taken me a little more seriously a few years ago,” she writes, “my life today would be totally different.”
Gladwell’s tale begins with her painful symptoms.
“I first saw my GP in 2014 when I was experiencing stomach cramps and trouble going to the toilet. I would go days being chronically constipated, feeling bloated and uncomfortable, and no amount of laxatives would help.
Of course, while waiting to see my GP I headed to doctor Google, which brought up all sorts of bowel issues, which worried me even more.”
She explains how the first doctor she saw refused to take her seriously, treating her as a “hormonal” girl and dismissing her pain as “women’s troubles.”
“But when I actually saw a GP, my bowels were never mentioned. I was young at the time, only 18, and whenever I went to the doctors, I felt like I didn’t get taken seriously. I was just a ‘hormonal’ young woman, still developing. I was probably just experiencing ‘women’s troubles.’
Every time I saw the GP, the same thing was said. You could tell they were getting frustrated with the number of appointments I was booking. One doctor even rolled his eyes at me and labelled me a hypochondriac.”
Gladwell recalls how she lost a ton of weight (8 stone is approximately 112 pounds) and began to experience rectal bleeding.
“I was frustrated, but I knew there was something wrong. I needed to keep going. In October 2014, while at work, I experienced rectal bleeding for the first time. Blood poured down my leg. I was freaking out. At first, I thought maybe I’d come on my period. But the blood was dripping down the backs of my legs, starting at my bum.
I stood in the mirror examining what was happening and realised that the blood was coming from my rectum. And there was a lot of it. It was around this time that I’d also lost a lot of weight. I’d got down to a size 6 and 8 stone which for me wasn’t healthy. I’d always been curvy.”
Doctors still did not take her seriously.
“But again, doctors put this down to being a woman – blaming my looks, the pressure to be skinnier, possibly having an eating disorder, despite eating junk food every night.”
Even though she was clearly bleeding from her rectum and not her vagina, the doctor told her she was simply on her period.
“After the bleeding, I went back to the doctor, certain that this time they would do something. But I was wrong. Though I told him where the blood was coming from, he attempted to assure me I was just having a period.
I tried to explain I’d been having periods since the age of 14, I knew the difference between a period and rectal bleeding, but once again, I was turned away.”
Gladwell says that she gave up on surgery at this point, having been gaslit and dissuaded by doctor after doctor.
After that, I gave up on the GP surgery. There was no point. I wasn’t getting answers and every time I went I was made to feel like a time waster, as though my illness was all in my head.
But about a year after her symptoms began, it all came to a head.
“But then in January 2015, I fell seriously ill. I’d got home from a driving lesson when I collapsed near the toilet thinking I was going to be sick. I was hot and dizzy. I managed to make it back to my bed and I fell asleep.
I was in an out of consciousness for the next two days. Delirious, hot and cold, with horrendous stomach cramps, nausea and diarrhea. Over the space of a week, I was using the toilet 50 times a day. It was awful.”
The side-effects of whatever was going on in her body were so severe, she could not even leave her house. And doctors still didn’t listen.
“I called the GP surgery to explain what was going on, but I was unable to go in for an appointment because I couldn’t leave the toilet. They prescribed me some IBS tablets, which, safe to say, didn’t work. Over the next five days I visited A&E three times. Each time, I was turned away, told I must just have gastroenteritis.”
At this point, Gladwell was so sick she needed constant care. Her mom took her to her own doctor, who made a swift diagnosis.
“Finally, I decided to go and stay with my mum. I was incapable of looking after myself at this point. Just a day into the stay and she found me crouched over the bed in so much pain I could barely breathe through it.”
She took me to her own doctor, who diagnosed me with suspected appendicitis and told me to go to the hospital. The moments on from this are a blur. The trauma means I have blocked a lot of it out. But I do remember some things. I was admitted to hospital and had my appendix removed.”
Her condition had gone misdiagnosed for so long, she nearly died.
“My condition continued to deteriorate. I was on maximum pain relief and I was very, very sick. A week into my stay and I was close to death. As I was lying in my hospital bed I heard popping coming from my stomach. My large bowel was about to perforate.”
Gladwell’s large bowel imploded in the wake of her appendix removal, leading to her having to use an ileostomy bag.
“Next thing I know I was rushed down for emergency surgery to remove the bowel, and I woke up with an ileostomy bag – where your small bowel is brought out to the outside of your stomach, known as a stoma, and you basically poo into a bag.”
She explains how as an insecure young girl (who of us wasn’t, at some point?) this was a living nightmare.
“I was an insecure, body conscious young girl. For me, I was living a nightmare. The histology report showed that I had been living with ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, for quite some time. Waking up with a stoma bag was hard for me. I couldn’t look at it for a good four weeks.”
After an adjustment period, she came to terms with her new body. She couldn’t, however, accept the way doctors had rejected her continual pleas for help.
“However, after some time adjusting, I came to terms with it. I accepted it. What I couldn’t accept, though, was that if someone had just listened to me, when I was absolutely begging for help, none of this would have happened.”
Though her quality of life dropped severely, she was able to reverse the ileostomy.
“My quality of life since the operation, which took place three years ago, has been hugely affected. I lived with a stoma bag for ten months before having a reversal – which is where the stoma bag is removed. I had the area between my small bowl and rectum stitched to allow me to go to the toilet ‘normally’ again.
Though the term “normal” does not mean the same thing for her as it does the rest of us.
‘Normal’ after a reversal means using the toilet up to 10 times a day – sometimes more – and having constant diarrhoea – which means you have to take lots of digestive slowing medications, watch your diet, and deal with stomach cramps on the regular.”
She is plagued by anxiety and has developed mental health issues as a result of her experiences with terrible doctors.
“Every time I leave the house, I worry about finding a nearby toilet and making it in time. My life is consumed by anxiety. I have missed out on so many things due to my need to be close to a toilet.
The whole experience has had a detrimental effect on my mental health. I have developed health anxiety, which has post traumatic tendencies, due to being ignored for so long and falling critically ill. I panic at the slightest bodily sensation, and can fly into a panic attack easily, convincing myself there is something seriously wrong.
One of my main fears is that I am going to fall critically ill again, nobody is going to pick up on the symptoms, and then something bad is going to happen.”
She is seeking help, but cannot help lamenting over how much medical neglect has cost her both inside and out.
“Luckily, I am going through CBT for this anxiety – but that doesn’t take away everything else that has happened in my life due to being dismissed by doctors. Being dismissed has cost me so, so much.
It has cost me my social life, my ability to work outside of my own home, the ability to enjoy an entire day or holiday somewhere without panicking about using the toilet. It has cost me my body confidence.
My stomach is now filled with scars and I experience constant weight fluctuations from different medications.
It has cost me a big chunk of my mental health. It has cost me around 70% of the chance I am going to be able to have children naturally due to having so much scar tissue from the surgeries.”
Gladwell ends her essay with a plea to doctors: Listen to young women.
“Doctors, please listen to young women when we say there is something wrong. We aren’t stupid. Not everything can be blamed on periods. We know our own bodies.
Take us seriously when we are telling you we’ve noticed a serious change. A woman scared for her health is not a time waster, a hypochondriac or someone who’s dramatic.
They are a woman, concerned for their health, relying on you to help discover what’s going on with their body. Don’t break that trust, and their confidence, while adding serious future risk, by turning them away.”
h/t Metro.co.uk