Such a sad story. With women the experience is typically worse on average when they talk to doctors as the doctors even female one trust them less than male patients. Even feminists advise to go to a doctor with a husband or male relative or friend and let them do the talking.
I'd never heard that, but it sounds to me like the other side of the same coin regarding what's commonly said of men: that they delay going to the doctor for too long as symptoms progress, or even don't go at all unless insisted upon.
It could be that, on average, doctors become accustomed to the idea that when a man visits them it must be very serious, and therefore when they are visited by women they generally display milder or less obvious signs and symptoms by comparison (again, on average). Hence, doctors may get the impression that women are more hypochondriac than men when the fact of the matter is actually the inverse.
Men get routinely ignored, disrespected and misdiagnosed as well. The doctor-patient relationship is adversarial (when facing someone you don't already know), what matters is not what they choose to give you, it's what you can take from them. This is why people who are more assertive and confident will generally do better, as well as people who come in groups.
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