Women who survived the coronavirus angry after persistent symptoms ruled out by doctors as “anxiety”

Women who have suffered from prolonged coronavirus symptoms have responded to doctors who they say do not recognize their suffering and dismiss it as a psychological condition or stress.

Speaking to NBC News, Ailsa Court of Portland, Oregon, said she had initially contracted the respiratory illness more than four months ago, but still experiences a series of debilitating symptoms.

She said doctors have downplayed her complaints of persistent shortness of breath, pain in her lungs and tingling in her calves, saying the symptoms are in her head.

“I am very ill and some people tell me that this is a product of my imagination. It really feels like a nightmare, ”he said. “‘Gaslighting’ is the word I’ve been using repeatedly.”

Ms Court explained that the lack of sympathy for her conditions has a gender aspect and considered that a male patient who came to urgent care with the same set of health problems would have been taken more seriously.

“There are long-standing biases that are ubiquitous,” Dr. Melissa Simon, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of the Center for Transforming Health Equity at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told the store.

Previous research has revealed that women are neglected in healthcare systems and are often inadvertently fired due to professionals’ deep-seated unconscious bias.

A 2012 study in the US found that paramedics were less likely to take seriously injured women to an emergency or other trauma center (49 percent of women versus 62 percent of men).

Women are also less likely to be referred for testing if they complain of heart symptoms, and they are more likely to die after a serious heart attack due to inattention, research found.

People of color are also disproportionately affected by unconscious medical bias, with data showing that black patients with acute pain are 40 percent less likely than white patients to receive medications, and Latino patients 25 percent 100% less likely than white patients.

Alisa Valdés, 51, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, described a situation similar to Ms. Court’s to NBC News, saying that she had been ill with the virus since mid-March and that doctors had said her problems were a “mental problem”.

She said she felt the doctors had been “downplaying [her] as a woman, minimizing [her] like Latina. “

He explained how he has experienced serious complications from the disease, including emergency surgery to remove the gallbladder, extreme burning in the digestive tract, excruciating pain in the sternum and upper back, and loss of appetite.

“No one is going to go out there and say they are discriminating against you for those reasons,” he told the station.

“Then why do I have to go through? Intuition, instinct, past experience. The attitude of certain providers. The way they look at you. The way they don’t look at you. The way they ignore you.

Adrienne Crenshaw, 38, of Houston, who is black, contracted the coronavirus in mid-June and said she had been forced to make several trips to the emergency in the month since then.

She told the station that she had not witnessed racism or explicit sexism during her treatment, but said that doctors have often attributed her current symptoms to stress and grief over her father’s recent death from the virus.

Crenshaw, who was prescribed anti-anxiety medications for her symptoms, said she once heard a doctor say, “The girl is perfectly normal, there is nothing wrong with her.”

“In my head, I’m like, ‘I’m not perfectly fine. I’m not just going to the emergency room to go up a room, ”he told the station.

Increasing reports of the long-term effects of the virus have been steadily emerging across the United States as the pandemic continues, infecting more than four million Americans.

In early July, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged the possibility that the disease could cause “a post-viral syndrome” at a press conference.

“If you look anecdotally, there is no question that there are a considerable number of people who have a post-viral syndrome that in many ways disables them for weeks and weeks after the so-called recovery,” said Dr. Fauci.

“So this is something that we really need to seriously consider because it could be a post viral syndrome associated with Covid-19,” he added.

Dr. Jessica Dine, director of the advanced advisory lung section for Penn Medicine and a pulmonologist who has been treating patients with persistent symptoms, told NBC News that “the first step is to recognize that these symptoms are real.”

“The frustrating part for the patient and the clinician is that we don’t know if and when this will improve,” he said.