A Doctor Refused to Believe My Virginity
By: Cassius Corbin
Tags: Women, Sexuality, Equality, Healthcare, Health

A Doctor Refused to Believe My Virginity

Why do health care professionals dismiss women?

Photo by Daan Stevens/Unsplash

A few years ago a bad reaction to a new medication landed me in the Emergency Room. My hands had swelled. My face looked bloated. It felt like the flu times three.

I told my manager at work. I knew something was definitely wrong. She didn’t care.

“We’ll see how long you last,” she texted me. I lasted 10 minutes.

Out of fear of losing my job, I went to work. I’m still not sure how I managed the 15-mile drive.

I sat at my desk. It didn’t take long before the whole world went topsy-turvy and I blacked out, landing on the floor. Coworkers called Mom, who came to my work and drove me to the ER. Nurses immediately brought me back to a room.

I knew the problem had been the new medication. Even a simple Google search could’ve told you that. Several others had had a similar reaction to the same pills. But I knew tests were necessary — blood, urine, so on — to rule out anything else.

When the doctor came in, I remember distinctly the way he looked at me. His face twisted in irritation. Impatience radiated off him. He had things to do, that aura said. Things more important than examining me.

I felt like a burden as I lay ill in the hospital bed.

I answered a few basic questions. I explained the new medication and the bad reaction I was having. Although a Google search is far beyond refutable proof of it being the exact cause of my issue, I explained others had had similar reactions and it seemed like the most logical reason.

He appeared to consider it, at first at least, before his questions began again.

The doctor asked, “Have you considered you might be pregnant?”

Pregnant?

“No, that’s not possible,” I said. I had never had sex. Mom, who sat diligently by my bed, almost laughed. She also knew I had never had sex. As an added bonus, I didn’t like men sexually.

“How can you be sure?” The doctor said.

“Because I’m a virgin,” I answered.

His eyes narrowed. It felt angry and demeaning. The hostility made me feel bad for seeking help at all. He didn’t believe me.

“You don’t have to lie to me because your mother is here,” he said.

I sat shocked. Lie? Here I was in my mid-twenties — a full-grown, independent adult. I wasn’t a scared teenage girl hiding her sexual history from Mommy. I had no reason to lie.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “I have never had sex.”

Mom chipped in next. She looked like she might laugh at the whole thing.

“It’s true,” Mom said. “She hasn’t.”

Photo by Olga Kononenko/Unsplash

He refused to believe either of us. The doctor demanded a urine panel. I expected a urine test as part of a normal workup, but the doctor demanded to specifically check if I was pregnant. It felt humiliating.

I must have been lying, he decided. Why would I tell the truth?

All my problems, he decided, were based on his one notion that I probably got knocked up and either was hiding it or didn’t want to believe I was pregnant.

It wasn’t until my urine cleared me of pregnancy did the doctor care to tend to my actual sickness. I lay in that hospital bed for hours upon hours in agony — my misery prolonged — before he even dared consider anything else could be wrong.

I fell in and out of sleep, so sick it hurt to move. I ended up staying in the ER for over eight hours, with far too many of those hours going without any treatment. I feared at one point I would die due to his inaction.

Eventually, he ordered some sort of medicine in an IV once his initial diagnosis fell through. I never saw him again that night.

Should I always expect that level of hostility? I wondered. Was this just part of being a woman?