The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Statement
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 19

“They did not mean me 
when they said disabled”

MARISA WRIGHT

Statement Correspondent

They tell me I look so 
healthy. They tell me I’m 
just so young. They just can-
not believe it. They ask me if 
I’m really sick, like am I re-
ally sure? They ask me if I’ve 
actually received a diagnosis. 
They tell me it’s in my head, 
that it’s psychosomatic. They 
tell me it’s part of being a 
woman. 

There are so many things 
people tell me about my own 
body. If they’re not telling 
me, they’re second-guessing 
the information and descrip-
tions I share. 

Me disclosing an illness or 
disability that is invisible, 
which is to say it is not ob-
servable or evident in any 
readily apparent sense, often 
leads to these kinds of reac-
tions. Without the ability to 
observe my condition, many 
people question or refuse to 
believe its validity. 

Aside from any symptoms, 
the reality of living with an 
invisible condition is that 
people — doctors, family, 
friends, professors, cowork-
ers and so on — simply won’t 
believe you. They will label 
you as overdramatic, tell you 
that you’re just lazy or call 
you a liar. 

LSA senior Cheyanne Killin, 
who has multiple chronic ill-
nesses stemming from a rare 
genetic 
connective 
tissue 

disorder called hypermobile 

Ehlers-Danlos 
Syndrome 

(hEDS), shared her experi-
ence with this reality in an 
email to The Michigan Daily. 

“Because I do not look visibly 
disabled, many people often 
assume that I’m not a

tually sick, or, worse, that I’m 
actually only mildly sick and 
exaggerating my conditions 
for personal gain and/or ma-
licious intent,” Killin wrote. 

In medical settings, this kind 
of disbelief can have extreme 
consequences. 
Proper 
di-

agnosis and treatment are 
predicated by a doctor tak-
ing their patient’s concerns 
and description of symptoms 
seriously. When they don’t, 
patients can suffer unneces-

sarily. 

It is easier for a doctor’s un-
conscious biases to play a 
greater role in their evalua-
tion and course of treatment, 
particularly when conditions 
are not visible to a doctor, 

which is the case for 96% of 
the nearly 133 million Ameri-
cans with at least one chronic 
illness. In this way, a doctor’s 
biases about one’s identities 
can stand in the way of prop-
er treatment. 

Doctors are less likely to 
believe and properly treat 
women’s pain than men’s. 
Doctors 
also 
undertreat 

Black Americans’ pain rela-
tive to white Americans. 
Black women in particular 

are harmed by doctors who 
dismiss their concerns and 
improperly treat them: Pro-
Publica reports that “a black 
woman is 22 percent more 
likely to die from heart dis-
ease than a white woman, 71 
percent more likely to perish 
from cervical cancer, but 243 
percent more likely to die 
from pregnancy- or child-
birth-related causes.” Doc-
tors’ bias against fat people 
and queer people also leads 
to worse health outcomes. 

Killin has felt this acutely 
when treated by male physi-
cians. 

“I was often told that I was 
just anxious, stressed, or 
pregnant,” Killin wrote. “If 
those were negated, like a 
negative pregnancy test, I 
was just shown the door 
without options or treat-
ment. I’ve been sick since 
October 2017, and I am just 
now finding out exactly what 
is going on with my body.”

For my own primary condi-
tion endometriosis, patients 
typically face a diagnostic 
delay of seven to 10 years 
from the onset of disease. In 
my case, a doctor misdiag-
nosed me with appendicitis 
— for which I underwent an 
appendectomy — seven years 
before I received my proper 
diagnosis of endo. For those 
seven years, my pain was un-
treated and the progression 
of the disease continued. 

While part of this diagnostic 
delay is due to doctors’ lack 
of training on conditions that 
are traditionally associated 
with the female reproductive 
system, it is also certainly 
caused in part by doctors 
who dismiss their patient’s 
pain as “part of being a wom-
an.”

Art & Design senior Anna 
DeLuca, who has endometri-
osis and chronic migraines, 
shared a similar experience 

in trying to receive a proper 
diagnosis and having doctors 
dismiss her pain as a woman. 

“Especially if you initially go 
in for painful periods, you are 
often dismissed because you 
know, periods are supposed 
to be painful or whatever,” 
she told me in a Zoom inter-
view. 

DeLuca described the impact 
this dismissal had on her.

“And then you’re sort of 
hit with that wall and then 
you 
can’t 
say 
anything 

else,”DeLuca said. “When 
you are immediately dis-
missed I shut down, I feel 
like I sort of I can’t say any-
thing else because you know 
they’re not going to listen 
and so, then you try it again 
with another doctor and you 
get the same experience.” 

In addition to complicating 
diagnosis and treatment in 
medical contexts, the perva-
siveness of disbelief of invis-
ible conditions affects issues 
of access to resources for 
chronically ill and disabled 
people, including govern-
ment benefits and accommo-
dations at school or work. At 
the University of Michigan, 
the laborious process re-
quired to prove a need for ac-
commodations through the 
Services for Students with 
Disabilities office can leave a 
lot of students out. 

DeLuca explained how the 
form SSD requires to request 
accommodations is “so long” 
and requires that your doctor 
complete most of it.

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