[tehwebguy]

> ...it took another few years to find another set of doctors who would take her symptoms seriously. “I had a lot of, ‘You’re just hysterical,’ ” she remembers. “One of the more common things, especially in emergency rooms, was ‘You’re just drug seeking.’”

> As a woman of colour, Jackie was facing more than gender bias.

A friend of mine (black, female) was shooed away by doctors as "drug seeking" and later told she had lyme disease, was even put on a treatment for it before someone listened carefully and discovered the gigantic tumors growing on her liver!

Meanwhile I (white, male) went in for a 2-week cough that was keeping me up at night. Never been to this office or met the doc before but was given a script for codeine (!!) after about 2 minutes in the exam room.

[Spooky23]

Your story sounds worse to me -- you sought medical attention for a problem, received a dangerous drug with no meaningful diagnosis. I'm sure your insurance company still received a big bill for those 2 minutes.

I (white, male) have had similar experiences to your friend, minus the "drug seeking" accusation. Things like cysts and tumors are difficult to diagnose without imaging, and imaging is difficult to justify without symptoms. Lyme disease is often doctor-speak for "no idea".

[JackCh]

If your friend, like you, had received a powerful narcotic painkiller instead of a diagnosis, might the painkillers have covered up her symptoms and caused her tumors to go unnoticed longer?

I'm very skeptical of the medical industry. Modern medical science is fantastic stuff but as an industry there is something seriously wrong. I think they over-prescribe painkillers on a scale few people would find believable. It's disappointing they aren't applying the skepticism your friend received universally across the board. It would do a lot of good if they did.

[Mirioron]

There might be bias at play, but this kind of different treatment happens to all sexes and races. It depends on doctors. I'd like to bring up people with ADHD being treated as drug-seekers, but I can't seem to find any real data on it. All I have are collections of anecdotes anyone could read up on by googling it and reading forums or simply reading reddit about it. On the other hand, that's going to be very biased.