@megancollins51: The question came the night after. Not about her — about me. About why I hadn't known what to look for. About the decade of symptoms she'd been told were stress. About the gap between what her body was doing and what anyone in a position to help understood. I started asking questions I'd never thought to ask. About what actually happens to a woman's body over time. About what the symptoms look like before a diagnosis. About what we were never taught — and why. The answer to the last one surprised me most. Women were excluded from most major medical studies until 1993. Excluded. From research that was then applied to them. Which means that for decades, treatment protocols for conditions affecting women were built on data from men. And the conditions that affect women differently — or exclusively — got the least research, the least funding, the least clinical attention. This isn't a conspiracy. It's a gap. A structural gap in what was studied, what was taught, and what practitioners were trained to see. The result is that millions of women experience symptoms that their doctors weren't equipped to recognize. Not because the doctors are bad. Because the education was incomplete. One answer. Changes everything you thought you understood. When a personal crisis breaks open questions you never knew to ask, what you find is usually not the answer you expected. You find a gap. A structural absence in what practitioners were trained to look for. Decades of medical research conducted primarily on male subjects applied to women by assumption. That gap isn't a coincidence. It's a consequence. The question my mother's diagnosis forced me to ask changed what I look for in my own health. It might change what you look for in yours.

megancollins

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Sunday 21 June 2026 22:05:13 GMT