‘I think I know what you have, endometriosis.’ And that was the first time I had ever heard that. And this was a Black doctor and she said ‘You fit the criteria, but in order for you to be properly diagnosed, you’d have to have surgery.’ So she went in with the little scope, but thank God I did not give up. Thank God I became an advocate for myself,” Mowry shares.
Audience member Lindsey also details her story of being dismissed by her doctor:
“I actually had gastric bypass surgery a year ago and it’s very challenging. People think it’s a quick fix. You have to work at it every day for the rest of your life. And it was especially challenging because my surgeon was very unsupportive. Five minutes before I’m being wheeled into the operating room he said ‘You know what? You’re probably going to fail at this because you already have.’ According to him, I hadn’t lost enough weight from before that he thought I should’ve, so he said ‘You already failed based on your culture of your family you know, a lot of it is based around food and reunions and cookouts,’” she shares.
“The following day, I was being discharged and he walked in and I was in extreme pain and I asked if I could stay another day cause it was hurting to breathe and he accused me of wanting to stay extra in the hospital just for the drugs. When you’re trying to better yourself and make positive changes, you assume your doctors would be the number one people on your support team. So to not have that was difficult.”
These two unfortunate stories further reiterate the importance of advocating for yourself and pushing forward when you face obstacles from your care team.
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How to be your own advocate
“You gotta be your own doctor and I don’t mean you go to school to know what doctors are doing. But you have to know your body,” Whitley shares.
“I highly encourage when you’re going to see a doctor, write down your concerns and questions. Write them down before you go and see your doctor so that you’re organized and can make sure that you can talk about it. If the doctor tries to dismiss you, or maybe the doctor just says ‘Honestly I just don’t know what it is,’ get a new doctor. You are not married to your doctor. You have the right to have a doctor who treats you like the beautiful woman that you are and cares for you and works as a partner with you. Do not settle for anything less,” Dr. Briggs adds.
Another important part of staying on top of your health is knowing what your numbers are.
“Here’s the deal, we all have different body types, but we still have to optimize our health. It’s those numbers like that total cholesterol has to be underneath 200, those LDLs have to be underneath 100. Women (Black women in particular) have much higher rates of high blood pressure and heart disease than other women and we don’t even know it sometimes cause we don’t know the numbers. We really want to make sure our blood pressure is 120 over 80 and [we are] actually eating the healthy foods of all the colors, exercising, being intentional of what we’re doing,” Dr. Briggs adds.
Although Dr. Briggs believes our healthcare system is broken and was not built for us, there is hope. She encourages everyone to learn about the Equal Healthcare Act for All and make sure that this legislation is continuously pushed through.
“There’s a website that’s called racistmedicinekills.com where we are collecting stories to complete this campaign so that we can continue to evolve into a new vision of a system where we’re really promoting health, we’re owning health. Versus just trying to get healthcare services,” Dr. Briggs concludes.