[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to the Aquaman podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an exploration of woman kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here we discuss what it is to be a woman in the modern world while utilizing ancient and modern modalities in tandem to create a bounty of health for the body, mind and spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good day everyone and welcome back to the pod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you're having a nice morning after noon or evening, wherever you're listening or watching from today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we get into this podcast today, talking about the medical system and how is women within a system that isn't really built with us in mind, how can we get the best outcomes possible?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to pay my respects to the oldest past, present, and future residing on the lands I'm recording this podcast today in Literator Tasmania.
[SPEAKER_00]: Always has, always will be baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're watching today, you'll probably notice I have a little bit of a different setup.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have my laptop here in front of me just because I really want to make sure I get all the facts right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to talk a little bit of the outset about what really inspired this podcast today, and it was personal experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about making this podcast for a while, but I guess you don't really have inputters to unless sometimes you have personal experiences with the modern medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't really been in the modern medical system, neither has anyone around me really until this month.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had a massive month of medical interventions for myself, for family and for friends as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of what's inspired this podcast and I just want to say at the outset,
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that there are amazing medical professionals.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are incredible surgeons, GPs, doctors, and specialists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know this is a fact because I interview them all the time on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just saying this at the outset because I think a lot of the time when women speak negatively about the medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are just told that we should just be lucky and that everyone's doing their best.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you should just be happy with what you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just going to say that's a
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not happy with that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, the medical system is something that is very convoluted and very complex and hard for women to navigate through and very often women don't get very good outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what this podcast is about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about a broken medical system that negatively influences everyone and impacts everyone, especially women.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to be talking about medical paternalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be talking about how medical system is set up, how women were included or excluded in this system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's some tools and things that you can have in your back pocket when you're going to a GP or specialist so you can The listen to and be taken seriously and get the most out of this system.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to say at the outset as well that this podcast isn't going to be overwhelmingly positive It's going to be pretty negative because unfortunately a lot of women including myself and my best friend and other family members recently have had really really really negative experiences with them with the modern medical system
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to be talking about that and you are going to feel pretty activated and I'm going to say that's really, really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time I'm recording, it is March of 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: Officially, it's endometriosis awareness month.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've been watching my friend of 11 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was made of honor at her wedding.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been in each other's pockets for 11 years battling with the medical system as she has an 11 centimeter endometrioma in her ovary.
[SPEAKER_00]: And endometrioma is an endometriol
[SPEAKER_00]: that has a diameter of 11 centimeters.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the size of an apple.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine having a benign tumour, the size of an apple in your ovary, whole destructive that would be?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been watching my best friend losing her ability to work and going to doctor's offices and her specialists and being told she has to wait months for a surgery to take this out of her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's going to the ER with excruciating pain more than I could ever imagine and being given
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been watching her get angrier and angrier and throughout our conversations over the past few months I've told her that this emotion is a really good thing and it's going to activate you to make a change because this is not good enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so through that activation of that feeling of anger she found a new specialist and next month, so in about 20 days she is going to be having her decision
[SPEAKER_00]: Surgery with an amazing surgeon, a self, one of our friends and her husband are all going to go to a city where she's having this done because she has to travel to have this fucking surgery done because no one in her home state is able to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be able to be all there for her and to help her with this surgery which is just so amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really, really happy but it got her being so angry to go far
[SPEAKER_00]: this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not happy with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not good enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm leaving that reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm calling you out, your receptionist staff are really unhelpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you cannot make me wait six months for a surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is ridiculous and unethical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to find someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anger is an emotion and as I spoke in my previous podcast with the incredible Irene Lyon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emotion is energy in motion and Anger is one of those amazing emotions that women unfortunately feel really uncomfortable with.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I love anger in a way that it really tells you that what you're experiencing you are not okay with and it activates you to make a change.
[SPEAKER_00]: So moving away from something that you're uncomfortable with, making your change, speaking out for yourself and defending yourself because your boundaries have been crossed in that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anger does not ask for stillness, it asks for action.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this podcast at the end of it, I won't be surprised if you feel infuriated with the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let that activate you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Connect with organizational groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe go to a rally.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe write out to doctors and GPs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Become more activated in your community so you can make life better for all of the women putting yourself and the people you love.
[SPEAKER_00]: This also ties into more of a personal story as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the past few months, I've been really open-moved people on my Patreon about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been struggling with like a few health things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to go into them in great detail because I just want to make sure that my private life is private.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that there are a lot of creators and influences in this space who are really open about these things and I just decided very early on that I wasn't going to do that, but I am going to share a few little things here, so I would respect privacy in this space just stating that boundary really really clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I noticed a few different things, so my sleep was getting worse, so I was waking up multiple times of the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was getting hot in the middle of the night, I was waking up really really tired, I was tired during the day, and this was really unusual for me, because at this point in my life, I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: Super calm, you know, have a great relationship, have great community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a really stable house.
[SPEAKER_00]: It really just didn't make any sense to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew it was my health.
[SPEAKER_00]: Had other stuff going on as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my blood pressure was really high and I picked that up with my ultra human ring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I also had really like bad heart rate variability.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your heart rate variability.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your heart doesn't beat at the same rate all of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It varies.
[SPEAKER_00]: right so when you're moving it will increase and when you're still it will decrease but if you don't have a good heart rate variability so there's no difference between when your heart should be pumping faster and slower that means that there's something going on with your cardiovascular system.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was really confusing to me because I don't drink, I don't smoke, I'm super active, I hate a whole food diet and usually get a lot of sleep and really great with my workbait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life balance I'm not a stressed out individual either so I found this really really unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to my doctor and this is kind of where the problems started to happen and I was like, really, that's what you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing we really did was look into my thyroid, because we wanted to rule out grapes disease.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a whole podcast about the thyroid with a amazing specialist, she's a natto-path tower Nelson.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're interested in the thyroid, look into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to rule out thyroid.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we did T3, T4, TSH, we also did some antibodies for graves, but she didn't order.
[SPEAKER_00]: My doctor didn't order the antibody that you need to rule out graves.
[SPEAKER_00]: She also didn't do my iron labs, which is something that I asked her to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I saw an epipology lab list of what she had ordered, I was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you fucking kidding me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going back to the doctor to go and ask for the proper labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's not going to be able to see me for a week, so I'm going to have to order my own labs, which I'm super grateful for and I do that through ice cream, which is an amazing service.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll link it down below.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I did the Grace Disease, anybody and I also did my own iron and I also did my own thyroid labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I had her labs and my loves back, I came to her and she was like, oh, I didn't do iron.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, you didn't even though you asked for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did it myself here, you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we found out that I had really, really low iron, which I found really, really strange, but anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So worked on iron.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, we're going to do an iron infusion and I said, cool, I don't want to do a full iron infusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to do a half iron infusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she acted a bit weird about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still gave me a script for two vials of iron.
[SPEAKER_00]: So serum iron to have an iron infusion, but I only filled one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was like, if you do a full iron infusion sometimes, you can have negative
[SPEAKER_00]: So I worked on dietary iron and it also worked on supplementation, so I was working in iron by glycinate, really gentle in your stomach, not a fan of ferrous iron at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I also did my iron infusion, which was great in the experience with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctor came in checked, that was awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nurse he did, it was just gorgeous and I had a really she actually, that nurse, was the most positive experience I had.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was a shining light.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're watching this, listen to this, if you know who you are, shout out to you, you're amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: My thyroid was fine, which was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I an infusion was good, and my symptoms improved kind of.
[SPEAKER_00]: My sleep still wasn't amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just was, it was really distressing.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone has ever had like no sleep before, or if it had any insomnia flares before, it's really distressing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not having sleep is really
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't working, you know, and she literally said to me, and I quote, you're just going to have to accept that you have insomnia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just supposed to accept that this is how it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I'm never seeing you again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the internal thing that I said to me, as soon as that came out of her mouth, I was like, I'm never seeing you face again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm never seeing you again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, I'm gonna order you another thing of lab so we can make sure that your eye is fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, so that happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did my eye and labs and they got sent to my doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point in time, I didn't know about my health record.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that you could say, hey, I want this sent to be myself from the pathology lab.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew that they were in, and I called the reception staff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, my name is Sarah, I'd like to see my labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first reception I spoke to, maybe she wasn't aware of the different law changes from 1988.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically I said, hey, I want to see my labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you please send them to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, we can't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to come in and have an appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew at this point in time that there is something called the Australian Privacy Act from 1988, if you look up APP12, there is a part of this act that really clearly states that no doctor, no specialist, no receptionist, no clinic, can withhold your data from you and lab results from you, unless you have some sort of like horrible disorder going on that they need to basically
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew I wasn't in that camp, or at least I hoped I wasn't in that camp.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when she said, no, we can't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: My immediate thought was, oh, shit, something really wrong here.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought, no, actually, I don't think there's anything seriously wrong here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to push because we've done eye and lips previously, nothing came up.
[SPEAKER_00]: My fire, it's mine, my eye and was just low.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's literally just iron.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not coming in to pay for another consultation with a doctor I've had very negative experiences with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can see my labs which are probably going to be fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was like, no, you can't hold my labs against my will.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would like you to update them to my health records so I can view them in a week to two weeks or I want you just to send them to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's actually illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't withhold that suddenly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, didn't really like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she had to be on to the nurse and the nurse who did my iron infusion was like, hey, how's it going?
[SPEAKER_00]: She needs to open them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctor needs to open them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she'll open them and then I'll send them to you this afternoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at this point in time, don't have my lads very spoken to two people.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of those people has really not wanted to give me my lads.
[SPEAKER_00]: Call back the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: spoke to a receptionist, yes, I'll send them to you midday, spoke to someone at midday, did they send me my labs?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, had to call back in the afternoon twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the end of her day and I understand, you know, medical receptionist at the end of the day you've dealt with everyone's bullshit and I understand the last thing you want to do is send out someone's lab at 455.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at this point in a time I'd call five times and I still didn't have my fucking labs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is so frustrating.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is so frustrating having to call the clinic five times a day to have
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I called her again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So hey, still don't see the labs in my inbox, she said, oh, it takes a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can you please just send it again?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it came through immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, calling five times, speaking to six people, to get my labs, that's pretty ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I opened up my labs and lo and behold.
[SPEAKER_00]: my eye and was fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of what I went through and at the same time I'm calling back and forth with my best friend who's in and out of specialists in and out of GPs, in and out of these surgeons who were telling her that her surgery is not covered by insurance which is ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: If men had endometriosis, it would be a non-issue, the fact that they're telling my best friend that she needs to wait six months for endometriosis surgery and insurance can't cover it, get fucked, get absolutely fucked.
[SPEAKER_00]: told that she can't have her labs, told that she can't access this or that, ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is kind of the backstory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel really activated about this and why I wanted to make this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is really systemic, you know, so I made a post in January of this year which read the woman to woman what's the most outrageous thing a doctor has ever said to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not even going to lie to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're with
[SPEAKER_00]: thousands of responses.
[SPEAKER_00]: I posted this on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, thousands of responses on each of those posts, exact same to post, exact same caption and everything, thousands of responses on each.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've categorized a few of them here for your listening pleasure, buckle up because you're going to get angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was angry listening to these and reading these.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first category is denial of problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I quote, some women just have bad skin, there's nothing you can do about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're too skinny to have insulin resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are so fat because you dress all black.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you wore colors, you would lose some weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have PCOS and she wasn't able to diagnose me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Going to a medical professional and told that you need to wear colors to lose weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next quote here is, yeah, but you're not fat or hairy enough for me to think it's PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said when I had ovarian cysts and this person who commented this later was diagnosed with PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something I hear a lot with PCOS, actually, is you're not fat, you're not hairy enough, and also, the hell?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's your fucking bug, Benz?
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never, like, that is so inappropriate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would never say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually know of someone as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Recently, you told me that when she went to her IVF doctor, told her that her uterus was fat, and her uterus was too fat to have babies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just so insensitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second one here is a baby will fix that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I quote, when I was diagnosed with PCOS, my gynecologist told me, oh, it's a problem that solves itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is gonna pass once you have child.
[SPEAKER_00]: Me, it 26 with PCOS, you should really consider having kids soon before you get too old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Went to the ER for a ruptured ovarian cyst caused by my PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was bleeding internally and incredibly ill.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ER doctor told me, why don't you just get pregnant?
[SPEAKER_00]: pregnancy fixes PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: just have a baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next is denial of care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked my doctor for a referral for soccer therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I should rather just take anti-depressants.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always concerned about how they would affect my libido, and he said, well, that's not such a big concern for women now, is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: The second one here, a new ahead PCOS, but my guy and I said, it wasn't worth treating because I didn't want to have children.
[SPEAKER_00]: The third one here is we don't want to remove organs just for contraception.
[SPEAKER_00]: My new male gynecologist during my consult for exploratory surgery for endometriosis after 10 years of pain and of normal bleeding.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like you didn't even open up a chart prior to our appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a surgery procedure where he said everything was normal and I read my own pathology report and discovered my full
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, subcategory I have here is surgery and medication pressure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So two oncologists in the breast cancer industry, because it's definitely an industry, pressured me to remove my breast because I had some lesions in addition to a small tumour in my right breast.
[SPEAKER_00]: After researching my diagnosis, I discovered it's not really highly treatable and I didn't need chemo or radiation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have the tumour frozen and now I'm cancer-free.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still have my breast and the lesions completely disappeared and I'm cancer and tumour free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, here, my lady Gano told me I was completely in fertile and the only way to deal with my chronic pain from PCOS was to completely remove my ovaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was 21.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or to stay on super strong pills for the rest of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I decided not to get my ovaries removed, but stayed on the pill for a while managing my pain with a prescription for weed, which I had to beg for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So medical marijuana, also known as cannabis, marijuana is not really the term
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually I did my own research and I started my own healing journey, turns out I just needed to manage my stress, it protein, not drink and each ship, and voila, I had regular periods very fertile to successful pregnancies within only three years of taking charge of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the third here is, and I quote from a gynecologist, everybody gets a trans vaginal ultrasound early in pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do them every day and there's no risk you need to do the pap and pelvic exam.
[SPEAKER_00]: She berates me for literally 20 minutes over and over again when I tell her I want an abdominal ultrasound and nothing inside of me at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to read through a few more of these, I will tag the Facebook, the TikTok and the Instagram post below so you can have a read of the literal thousands of comments just like these.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next thing I want to talk about here isn't necessarily what people have told me, but it's data that we have within Australia and other Westernised countries around the pressure that women have to get a history rectumy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just for reference, a hysterectomy is a partial or full removal of the reproductive organs in a woman's body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we can remove the uterus and leave the ovaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you still have a cycle, I have a friend who had this type of hysterectomy.
[SPEAKER_00]: A full hysterectomy is when we remove the uterus and the cervix attached to uterus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also remove the Philippine tubes and the ovaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we do this to a woman, it puts her in a state of instant menopause.
[SPEAKER_00]: it is an incredibly invasive surgery and it has negative long-term outcomes because that woman has to go on hormone replacement therapy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means we can have bone density issues, we can have mental health issues, gut issues, vaginal dryness.
[SPEAKER_00]: The list can go on when we remove naturally cycling, progesterone and estrogen from the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: The long-term negative outcomes are pretty dire and they need to be very clearly communicated to a woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I digress.
[SPEAKER_00]: Up to 70 to 90% of his directives call benign conditions like fibroids or heavy bleeding are categorized as unnecessary.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is from the UK's in HS and this is also from the safety inequality.gov.au.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these are backed up statistics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this conversation of unnecessary histirectomies is really pertinent after the shock headlines of a renowned Melbourne surgeon repeatedly removed tissue and organs from young women for, I quote, severe endometriosis when pathology showed that they had little or no trace of endometrial legions anywhere in their pelvis.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in layman's term, there was a surgeon in Melbourne who is now being investigated for doing full histirectomies on young women saying that they had endometriosis
[SPEAKER_00]: have endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely devastating and heartbreaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: ABC has done a lot of coverage on this if you wanted to watch anything on it, but just be prepared to go into that, you know, with a really regulated nervous system because I cried a lot when I watched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is heartbreaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely heartbreaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart goes out to the women who were treated by him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So basically, these women were sterilized for no reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no positive outcome for these women.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this all came out when Medicare was investigating Dr. Simon Gordon's feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: The left-post-copic surgeon was repeatedly charging Medicare for an item number three, five, six, four, one designated for severe endometriosis in circumstances whether women's pathology showed no or merely mild endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the women in ABC who were interviewed had undergone the 35641 microscopy surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's severe or deep infiltrating endometriosis only affects about 20% of women with the disease and gynecologists who spoke on and off the camera with ABC said that they only performed the 35641 operation in very rare circumstances because it is a very, very invasive surgery with long and short term negative outcomes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, very serious surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was handling it out really milly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to read it excerpt from the ABC article on Dr. Gordon and I quote, Mary Spannis had a apostrophe surgery with Dr. Gordon in 2020.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he'd be able to her and Medicare for a major operation with the item number reserved for severe endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: She says, Mamanai both crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary remembers he's saying it's all confirmed, it was all in dough, we got rid of it, so she's going to be amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Mary was an excruciating pain that did not subside, and was so bad for so one-month slater that she had to use a walking stick.
[SPEAKER_00]: When she tried to raise this with Dr Gordon, she said his attitude was completely dismissive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary demanded to see all of her medical records including crucially the history of pathology results from the day of her operation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were five separate pieces of tissue that had been sent off to pathology and all of them came back saying
[SPEAKER_00]: Marya remembers and his handwriting right next to it's saying Neil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this doctor knew that these women did not have endometriosis, but he's still carried out full his directives on these women, saying it was endometriosis when there was no evidence from pathology that it was endometriosis at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so bizarre because I'm watching my best friend go through
[SPEAKER_00]: this hardship of trying to get surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these women must have felt like they had a godsend.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, okay, I have endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have this doctor who's so, so willing to do this surgery on me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to feel better.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they didn't have endometriosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: They went into this very, very serious operation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he could charge Medicare and them and make a fuck ton of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: absolutely evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to say as well, this is not all surgeons.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really insane case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dr Gordon, he should be in jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he should be in jail right now, for life, for what he's done to these poor women, it is absolutely horrific.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a really extreme case, but women experience something like this on a different scale, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you go to your doctor and you've been on contraception and you're having suicidal ideation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're told that that's not a symptom of that contraception.
[SPEAKER_00]: You come to them with really heavy bleeds.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard of so many women going to the doctor and saying,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I'm on the copper RUD and I'm bleeding every 10 days for 15 days and they're like, that's normal, that's not normal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really boils down to a few different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: GPs are your first point of contact with a medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: GPs and I have a friend who's a doctor and she said to me, it didn't have the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: GPs have the hardest job because they have to know about so much and their job is to prevent things from getting so bad that they present
[SPEAKER_00]: so GPS have a really important and difficult job and they're also kind of the first protocol so you present to them and then they kind of put you want to a different surgeon or a specialist or they give you medication so they have to know a lot so all of that being said I think a lot of people now listening to this are thinking okay
[SPEAKER_00]: People do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can doctors feel okay with this behavior?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can surgeons feel comfortable with doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Dr Gordon, he's evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a completely different thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're just talking about your stock standard GP that doesn't want to listen to you, that doesn't let it listen to your symptoms, that completely dismisses you, denies your care.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do people in the medical industry feel comfortable doing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why do we see most of the people in the medical industry behaving in this way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we have this system?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has created this system?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where we get to the different section of this podcast, where we talk about the God complex and medical paternalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that really encapsulates this question that I was just talking about before.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do people in the medical field moralize this behavior?
[SPEAKER_00]: Two words, medical paternalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: The term medical paternalism gets used a lot in bioethics literature.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, it's the idea that doctors override patient autonomy for their own good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The definition reads, paternalistic medicine is a doctor-patient model where clinicians override patient preferences to act in what they believe is in the patient's best interest, similar to a parent-child relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: So these have found that medical students score higher in traits like dominance, autonomy, and the need to control and compare with the general population.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meeting that the profession doesn't just create these personalities, it actively attracts them to the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a concept known within the medical field as surgical personality that researchers have documented.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a profile that includes a higher achievement drive,
[SPEAKER_00]: And while this personality is named after surgeons, research and studies have continuously showed that we see a crop up in multiple different specialities across the medical field.
[SPEAKER_00]: On top of this, medical hierarchy reinforces this a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Years of training where you defer to those above you followed by suddenly being the one that everyone defers to, creates a very particular relationship with power and authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: One researcher described it
[SPEAKER_00]: for competence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Atil Guwande is an American surgeon and writer and he's written several books that are really relevant to this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specifically, his book, complications and being mortal.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his book, complications, he writes honestly about how medical training creates a culture of infallibility, where doctors are conditioned to project certainty, even when they are really uncertain, because it's bidding doubt,
[SPEAKER_00]: feels dangerous to their authority.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this he basically argues that the system produces overconfidence as a feature, not a fallout.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his other book, being mortal, his most famous quote is essentially, we've created a medical system that's good for treating disease, but terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: at treating people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He talks about how doctors prioritize their own clinical judgment over the patient's wishes and often add an enormous cost to the patient's quality of life and autonomy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are two points that we can take from Dr. Atol Guwanda's work here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, Guwanda argues that medical training rewards certainty over humility and doctors who say, I don't know, are rough and seen as weak from their colleagues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this
[SPEAKER_00]: which is really interesting because when I've gone on to a doctor and they are curious and they will say, actually, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's research it or leave it with me and our email you later.
[SPEAKER_00]: That for me means that I trust them a little bit more because it means that they are not going to pretend like they know.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to make sure they do know before they act.
[SPEAKER_00]: but within the medical system, that's seen as weakness.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that character trait in behavior isn't necessarily nurtured.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second point that we can take from Go Ande's book is the system itself reinforces paternalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just individual bad doctors, but it's a profession that trains people people to become that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have this medical paternalistic system that attracts these types of people and then also fosters pretty bad bedside manner, but then we also have the patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the patriarchy you fucking knew it was coming, it's in everything and infiltrates through every single system and one of the systems we see at the most obviously is within the medical system and how women have to navigate through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've heard this before, you've heard it a million times, the medical system was built four men by men without women in mind until 1993.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women let alone women of color were not even allowed to study it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the entire blueprint of water body years, what pain looks like and what normal means was written about women without us there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are still living within this blueprint today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a good example of this is the point that I literally made before about hysterectinies.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word hystereo which literally comes from the Greek word for uterus, ancient greets understood and theorized that women be crazy because their uterus is like to float out of place and around their body.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word hystereo is actually still present in the medical field today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever heard of hysterectomy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why isn't it called a uterectomy?
[SPEAKER_00]: So from the very beginning of ancient medicines, which modern medical systems will originate from apocrates because the hypocritic oath, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: First, do no harm was the first hypocritic oath made by this Greek philosopher.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where modern medicine really was based is in Greek philosophy.
[SPEAKER_00]: but also alongside Greek philosophy as well, there was a huge amount of misogyny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single one of these famous, five Greek philosophers were incredibly misogynistic and would say the most insane things about women and that is infiltrated in the very foundations of modern medicine, which means that from the very beginning, being a woman with symptoms in of itself was a diagnosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: You weren't sick, you were just female and therefore you're completely irrational.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the medical system did not throw this idea out, they just gave it a new outfit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not history anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just have anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you been feeling anxious today?
[SPEAKER_00]: This could be stress-related.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you considered therapy or antidepressants?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same dismissal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just clean a language and it maintains that women stay out of the driver's seat of their own health.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many different studies on this, for example, I think women with menopause present to the doctor are far more likely to get anti-depression or anti-anxiety medication than pain medication, for example, which is absolutely insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a woman is presenting to a doctor and saying I'm in pain and she's given anti-depressants, that is such a red flag of a medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a very clear sign that a medical system is broken and it's not working for women and doctors just straight up don't believe women when they say
[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when you push back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's completely maddening for most women.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you ask questions, when you dare to ask for your own lab results to pass on to a specialist, you are treated as a woman asking these very normal questions like you are unreasonable, because suddenly you are the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're difficult, you're emotional, you're just a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, a man doing the exact same thing is just advocating for himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have another layer that we can add on top here, which is if you are a woman of color, your outcomes are going to be even worse if you were in comparison to someone who's white.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the concept here is intersectionality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps you've heard this word before in feminist circles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say I'm an intersectional socialist feminist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because I believe in socialist values or reproductive concerns for women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also believe in intersectionality, which means that feminism is different for every woman because we also have to take you into account the concepts of class and race.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are a few stats that I need to read out here because I haven't actually touched on my perspective
[SPEAKER_00]: intersectionality and how that reflects within the medical system and negative outcomes for women's health.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just read a few out here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maternal mortality.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is really sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women of color are five times more likely to die from pregnancy related cardiomyopathy and blood pressure duct disorders in comparison with white women.
[SPEAKER_00]: This gap does not close with education or income.
[SPEAKER_00]: So black women with a degree they're still at a higher risk than a white woman who does
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also this pain myth as well, so medical education has historically perpetuated the sederial type that women of color have higher pain thresholds, which is why women of color were being experimented on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first IUD was inserted with no pain killers into women of color.
[SPEAKER_00]: why medical students and doctors still believe black patients are biologically less sensitive to pain, and these people are still currently practicing.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we look at endometriosis specifically for women of color, the average endo diagnosis is 7 to 10 years for all women, but if you're black or Hispanic, it could take twice as long, and that's because the main symptom of endometriosis is pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're presenting to a doctor with pain and they've been taught a medical school that women of color experience less pain, then you're not going to be taken seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Endo was historically framed as a disease of fluent women in playing it was rare in black women, despite early research sewing pelvic pain in black women was simply being misdiagnosed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Black women are 50% less likely to be diagnosed with enemy triosis than white women and Hispanic women are similarly so, not because they haven't less, but because they are
[SPEAKER_00]: In Canada, if the patient is black, the odds of receiving endo diagnosis are cut nearly in half.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a real example here.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a woman of color who suffered endometriosis for 18 years before a surgeon found endometriosis lesions that has used her bladder to her bowel and it nearly cost her kidney.
[SPEAKER_00]: fibroids.
[SPEAKER_00]: So black women are three times more likely to have fibroids than white women, and they often told their endosimptoms are just fibroids and they're sent away.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Australia specifically, so first nations women, so indigenous women in Australia, have a life expectancy that is 7.8 years shorter than non-indigenous women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, that is corrected.
[SPEAKER_00]: In indigenous women is educated if she is living in an affluent society.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still see this life expectancy
[SPEAKER_00]: The burden of disease for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is 2.3 times that of non-indigenous Australians, despite experiencing far worse health outcomes most Aboriginal people have less access to healthcare services and they generally feel sicker and they have less access to medical systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was speaking about before, there are very real statistics around this is missile that women of color experienced, 71% of black women age, 18 to 49 reported at least one negative account with a health care provider.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not a minor experience, it is the majority experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's an economic gut punch here for women in medical system, women earn less money, they have less time, they carry more of the mental load, and they generally will spend far more money within the modern medical system than men.
[SPEAKER_00]: So not only are women getting far less autonomy in the system, they're also paying more for the privilege to be completely dismissed and told with fucking crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here are some stats from different Western countries here, so the USA women spend approximately 35% more on out-of-pocket healthcare costs than men annually, according to the research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Australian Institute of Health and welfare has reported women spend significantly more across their lifetime, particularly in reproductive years, with estimates suggesting around 30 to 40% more per capita.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the UK, in HS data has shown women account for a disproportionate share of GP visits and out-of-pocket spending, particularly around reproductive and hormonal health.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we will look at Canada, studies suggest that Canadian women spend 25% more in healthcare annually than men of the exact same age bracket.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why is there this huge gargantuan gap in health care costs for women versus men?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, women go through distinct anatomical changes that are a direct response to their sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: Puberty, periods, pregnancy, miscarriage, bleeding, postpartum and parry menopause.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our anatomy gives us to need more support because we go through significantly more anatomical changes in comparison to men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, the pink tax.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women pay more for the same medications and treatments in some markets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women routinely attach more for identical health services, including therapy and certain procedures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, the diagnosis delay cost.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really pertinent for endometriosis and PCOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women with conditions like endometriosis, weight and average of 7 to 10 years for a diagnosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 7 to 10 years of pain for appointments, tests, wrong appointments, and lost income from sick days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number four is unpaid health labour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women in most cultures across the world are the default Cara in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: They book the appointments and manage the medications, research the conditions for everyone else on top of their own healthcare needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that invisible labour has an economic cost that never gets counted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also means that women are always prioritizing their elderly parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their children, their husband, above themselves, which means that things go longer untreated,
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means things tend to snowball and get worse and then we need more expensive treatment and number five mental health spending because women's physical symptoms get routed into medical health diagnosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: They actually end up spending way more on therapy and psychiatric care for conditions that are actually physical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the system mixed diagnosis you and sends you a bill for the wrong treatment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was propped into this, my doctor was like, maybe your anxious, maybe you need to go to therapy and look, I'm in therapy, but I'm not an anxious person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually got to the bottom of why I was having all of these symptoms with someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we've solved for it and all of my symptoms are better.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't stressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a physical problem going on with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I went to a psychiatrist for a year, what is that 200 bucks a week?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you fucking kidding me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine how much money that is for you not to have any positive outcome for a physical issue?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then on top of that, women have the gender pay gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gender pay gap by definition is the average difference between reneumeration received by women and women.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually expressed as a percentage of men's earnings.
[SPEAKER_00]: It measures the overall position of women in the workforce, not equal pay for the same work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in Australia, it's 21 to 22%.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the USA, it's 18%.
[SPEAKER_00]: 20%.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the UK, it's 14% to 15%.
[SPEAKER_00]: in New Zealand, it's 9 to 10%, and it's starkly worse in developing nations such as Mexico, where we're seeing massive 34 to 37% in Indonesia, 30 to 35% and Nigeria where we're seeing the gender pay gap is 50%.
[SPEAKER_00]: The global average from the world economic forum puts significantly higher when you factor in part-time work and career interruptions and that puts a closer to 36 to 40% lifetime earnings gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is because the less economic power women have, the less leverage they have in the medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can't afford to shop around for a better doctor, you can't afford time off work to attend multiple appointments.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can't pay out a pocket for tests, Medicare,
[SPEAKER_00]: The god complex of the medical system thrives where women have the least power.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the system we have has many layers to it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So medical paternalism, attracting and fostering really bad bedbeds in mana.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have the patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We also have the gender pay gap in the economic gut punch that women experience under patriarchal regime we have in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have this picture of the modern medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do with it?
[SPEAKER_00]: look, I can't change the medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life's work hopefully will influence the medical system in a way that we can actually have better bedside meta.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can start to dissolve medical paternalism and start to reward and give more doctors attention if they actually do have good bedside meta.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they're aware of these statistics and they're actively working against the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've had these people on my podcast, Dr. Rebecca McKenzie Proctor, Dr. Melanie Jackson, I've had Dr. Amy Bart, I've had other amazing specialists on my podcast as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're looking for a specialist that you want to give your time and your money too, that's actually good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please have a look through my podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have an international doctors directory that I'll link in the podcast as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doctors worldwide that have been recommended to me from my audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you ever want to recommend a doctor or specialist to me, please just send me an email and Instagram DM on TikTok, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And recommend people to me because then we can start to give recommendations to other women for doctors that are actually great and treat women with respect.
[SPEAKER_00]: but that's gonna unravel with time, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And my thought process around the medical system and how women can interact with it will inherently change it.
[SPEAKER_00]: by using these 10 strategies, so I'm going to give you 10 things that we can end with on a positive and proactive note that you can feel a little bit more confident going into your next doctor's appointment or specialist appointment, so you know that you're going to get better outcomes and it's also going to train those medical professionals to be better and treat women with a little bit more respect the first tool here is trust yourself you live in your body 24 hours a day seven days a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: okay, it's your body, you're the expert.
[SPEAKER_00]: No doctor has any more data on how you feel than you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel something is wrong and off, it probably is and you need to follow that instinct.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would recommend keep pushing the medical system until you find someone who is willing to meet you where you're at and believe you and listen to you and take you seriously.
[SPEAKER_00]: if you're going into the medical system, I just want you to know that you are your only way out, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know your instincts, you know your knowledge and your refusal to be dismissed is going to be one of the most powerful tools that you have, do not give up, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: If something is wrong, there is someone out there who will be able to help you, but it will take a bit of effort to get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two is educate yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this point in time, we have to accept that the system is broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's our against you and you are your only way out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need a medical degree, you just need to know enough about yourself and what labs you need, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes it really hard for medical professionals to dismiss you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Know your conditions, know your symptoms, know what tests exist for what you're experiencing and before you have any appointment, write down your symptoms, including
[SPEAKER_00]: vague gets dismissed, really, really easily.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specific gets investigated, be specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on top of that as well, I would recommend sending an email to your doctor before you get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what Dr. Army Bart said on her episode where we talked about medical system and how broken it is and what we can do with in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Send an email to your doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say, these are the symptoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the duration.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the tests I'm thinking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the three things that I am not leaving the appointment on spoken about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they are prepared, prepare them,
[SPEAKER_00]: for your appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, call ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the day of your appointment, you've done all the research, you've been listing down all of your symptoms, you're ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you have an appointment at 10 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to call at 10 o'clock in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and this is because doctors often run late.
[SPEAKER_00]: The medical system has many people needing help and the lack of people who actually can.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors therefore are overbooked and they're late.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not be the person who shows up on time and then sits for grudging leave for 45 minutes in the
[SPEAKER_00]: call ahead, ask if they are on time, and then ask the receptionist to tell you what time is better to come in.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happened to be yesterday with my new doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had an appointment at 930.
[SPEAKER_00]: I called at 915.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is my doctor running on time?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, she's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what time do I come in?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you come in at 10 o'clock, she'll be there for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: I rocked up at 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was waiting for five minutes and I was in the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been a very different story.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I had been waiting there for 45 minutes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So call ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women have less time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have so many different responsibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the patriarchy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We earn less money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our time is really, really, really important to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to be very smart with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors run late.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to expect that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going into the system, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is just a normalcy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone knows that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just understand, this is a systematic issue that you cannot solve, but you can prepare for it, so just call the head and prepare yourself for them to be late and have a flexible day.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can afford a flexible day, better yet, if you can opt for telehealth, that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: for telehealth get them to call you and be ready, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just tell your boss hate, I'm gonna have a flexible lunch today because I don't know when my doctor is gonna call me, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe just organize it on your day off, telehealth usually goes on weekends as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So telehealth a lot, I think for a lot of women, it's going to be great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, we're telehealth, though, the only negative is that we don't have a lot of continuity of care.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might not be able to get the same doctor again, which kind of sucks, but you
[SPEAKER_00]: Go in knowing what you can ask for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speak to a local council members and scale through privacy acts in your state or country government websites.
[SPEAKER_00]: A good example of this is what I spoke about before is the Australian Privacy Act of 1988.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under APP-12 you have the legal right to access of all health information held about you, including your lap results.
[SPEAKER_00]: a clinic cannot withhold them from you without a documented serious clinical reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cannot force you to come in and pay for another doctor's consultation to see them unless something is super super serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: If something is super serious, of course you want to know what those laboratory results mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: We never want to ask for our lab results and look at them and try and decipher the mast cells.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lab results are really, really confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't want to go in to see a doctor that you haven't had a good experience with and you also don't want to pay for a follow-up appointment, just ask for them to be sent to you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have that right, and then you can send that to a specialist.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can send that to a different health professional, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, if you have gone to your doctor and they say, okay, I'm going to do these labs for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you say great.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they ask you to come back to see those labs, bad industry is a follow-up appointment that is free.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother used to be a medical receptionist who knows all about this, and she gets so riled up.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets pissed when she finds out that medical centers are charging for follow-ups.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they're making you come in to see laboratory results, that's a follow-up appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's included in Medicare rebates.
[SPEAKER_00]: You shouldn't be paying for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: On top of the labs, if you have a situation with your clinic and then not handing over your labs to you, they have 30 days to hand them over to you underneath the 1988 Australian Privacy Act.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have 30 days if you request it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in this sense, if you request them, and I would highly recommend requesting them in email.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't call them because there's no paper trail.
[SPEAKER_00]: If
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that I want women to know is that in Australia you can sign up for my health records and also have a clinic upload all of your lab results to this service so you can see them and again if you request your clinic to upload all of your labs to my health records and they refuse to do so within 30 days report them we have a privacy after that's been around from the 80s to protect laboratory results and stop these doctors and clinics from being able to basically throw their weight around and stop them from being able to control lab results they have no right to control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that I want women specifically in Australia, and of course, all over the world to know, is know your frequency limits for key tests.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in Australia, we have free healthcare, which is amazing called Medicare.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so under Medicare, you're allowed to get B12, once every 11 months, unless your results are abnormal, hormone panels, including estradiol, FSH, LH, and progesterone have no strict annual frequency cap.
[SPEAKER_00]: High end studies have no blanket annual restriction either.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if your doctor says they can't run those tests, ask them exactly why and get them to show you exactly where that restriction is in writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if they don't let you run those tests, you're entitled to get them to write that in your notes and they will probably backpattle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So before you go in, if you know, I might have low IN and you've heard around town that this doctor doesn't allow you to do tests.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was someone in our town that does this again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was at dinner with my friend who's adopted the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I said, hey, we've had this experience with this doctor and she said, and I quote, I'm not going to let you run that test because that puts too much pressure on the medical system.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was livid.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, that is the most ridiculous statement of the herd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Medicare says that we there are no limits for specific tests.
[SPEAKER_00]: So know what you're allowed to ask for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if your doctor is like, no, I'm not going to did that for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You say, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I can't tell you why I say, okay, I'm just going to get you to run my notes that you deny me that lab there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then very often the go, and they'll do it for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, but hopefully you don't have that experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully your doctor knows the law, they know your medical limits and they're very happy to run laps for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's their job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five, bring a mate, bring a friend with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just doing this for emotional support, but we're also going to be doing this for documentation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two sets of ears, two sets of notes, and research actually shows that doctors communicate very, very differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: When a patient has someone with them, the dynamic really shifts their list likely to dismiss you, when there's a witness, and your support person can ask questions you might forget, and notice things you miss and advocate for you when you feel stingrolled.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my best friend, her husband, has been going to her appointments with her, and he has been really, really amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're bringing a friend with you as well, just on the doctors, when you're waiting in the doctor's office or in your way on your way there, just say, hey, this is my plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my game plan for this appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the labs I know I'm allowed to get because I've looked on my government website and I've spoken to the council.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the symptoms that I'm had and this is how long and this is what I'm thinking I'm suspecting I have and this is what we're going to do in each of these different situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes about five minutes and if you prepare your friend, if you feel emotionally steamrolled and dismissed, your friend can actually pipe up
[SPEAKER_00]: and support you and you can get a way better consultation with your doctor and your doctor will actually respect you a lot more.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tone really changes when there's a few other people in the room, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number six, document everything, absolutely everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: After every single appointment, I want you to write down what was said, what was recommended and what was refused.
[SPEAKER_00]: Betty, at right after your appointment, send an email to your medical provider with all of the notes and ask for clarification on
[SPEAKER_00]: paper trails.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate them so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Request a copy of your full medical file and read it, scow a through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember how we were talking about Dr. Gordon before.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that woman had scowered through her medical reports, she wouldn't have been given a hysterectomy because she would have seen on her medical notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said here in IL, there's nil next to endometriosis here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why the fuck are you booking me in for a hysterectomy?
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes no sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you, you are your own
[SPEAKER_00]: person in this situation, you're responsible for yourself, for a quest a full copy of your medical file and read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check what's been written about you here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very often women will have written in a medical file, anxious patient, frequent presenter in your notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will affect how every future doctor treats you, and it's good for you to be aware of and call it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you see that in your medical file, you're going to be emailing your doctor and saying, why are you written this in my file?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really inappropriate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please take it out and then it means you're going to have a better outcome with your next doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it also just means you know everything about your own health and you're on top of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number seven, I want you to remember this phrase I'm going to say it twice, so you can say it with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are not open to providing further testing to investigate or treatment options for me, I request that you note your dismissal of my pathology in my file.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's say it again together, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are not open to providing further testing to investigate or my treatment options,
[SPEAKER_00]: that you note your dismissal of my pathology in my file.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a doctor refuses a test or a referral or anything, let or any type of treatment, ask them to document that refusal in your medical file.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember the first few criticals, first you know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a doctor has a person in front of them,
[SPEAKER_00]: who is presenting with symptomology, that is quite serious and is negatively affecting them and they are saying no, I'm not giving you medication, no, I'm not going to run tests and no, I'm not going to refer you want to someone appropriate, that's where you use that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to note your dismissal of my pathology in my file.
[SPEAKER_00]: very often, if that there is a doctor who's not being helpful for you, they will back pedal immediately because that breaks their first oath of being a doctor, first dinner hunt, and that is harmful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just missing and not being able to help that person, who's paid to be here, is harmful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they'll back pedal because documentation creates accountability and again, bad doctors hate accountability, they hate paper trails, make it happen, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: In the very rare case where they do not want to do that for you, I want you to leave and you send an email to the clinic and basically say this doctor refused me care and I want you just again to document everything down and say this is what's happened these are the symptoms this is the labs I asked for this is the treatment or the specialist I wanted to be passed on to and this was dismissed right so if they're not willing to create a paper trail for you which again hugely problematic then you need to create it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number eight, always get a second opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you do not owe any medical professional or clinic loyalty, take your notes from existing consultations to a new doctor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, everything down for your current doctor, what they dismissed, what they refused to test, and bring document, and bring documentation to the next appointment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this gives the new doctor context and also means you're not starting from scratch and having to prove yourself all over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And doctors really appreciate this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A good doctor will really appreciate the journey you've been on.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will really like that and they will give them lots of context on what has worked, what hasn't worked, what has been denied, what they can give you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number nine is consider a functional or integrative GP.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, functional medicine practitioners and doctors, they typically spend a lot more time with their patients, they're more likely to run comprehensive panels and approach health more holistically.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where the economic reality really bites.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, functional GPs don't bolt fill.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, this option is an equally available to all women and that inequality is a part of the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if cost is a barrier, telehealth and GP services, I've made it significantly cheaper to access,
[SPEAKER_00]: doctors as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're worth your money and if you're going to a bunch of bad doctors who aren't helping you, you're going to be spending the same amount of money anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think over archingly, if you can't find a good GP or health specialist within the system you have, try going and finding an integrative GP or functional GP as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And number 10, finally, know when to escalate.
[SPEAKER_00]: The system will never improve if we allow medical professionals to miss treat us and get away with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Escalating isn't being difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's using the system in a way that is designed to be used.
[SPEAKER_00]: Research governing bodies in your country that register and regulate medical professionals for logic and plain if you believe you have been treated poorly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you've had any negative experiences of warm-in within these systems, please complain about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Logic and Plaint make this system aware of this, leave a bad review, contacts the clinic manager.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be difficult, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully this gives you a little bit of knowledge and power around how to navigate through this system and get the most out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in doing that, we are going to change the system and make it far better for everyone around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just to end this, I really just want to say thank you to the doctors, surgeons, specialists and nurses in the medical field that are actually doing really good work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the canary in the coal mine and we're so grateful for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a general dislike for doctors and nurses and friends with doctors and nurses and friends with surgeons.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love medical professionals and I really, really believe that they have gotten into this for good reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: but the medical system warps even the best of people and there are good people out there who can help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please remember to send on to family and friends and leave a five star review so I can continue this good thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to listen to this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you loved it, please remember to like, subscribe, and send to a loved one.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to learn more from our quaman, please check out the website at arquaman.com.au where you can find a pothora of offerings like charts, masterclasses, courses, and organic clothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also head over to patreon.com slash archwomen or sub-stack.com slash archwomen to join the community.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a really beautiful morning, afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world and I will see you on the next episode.