I have written before that the medical cases on Transplant, a Canadian TV show starring Hamza Haq running on NBC, are not all that interesting. But once in a while, one medical case on a given episode is really interesting and unusual, the kind that would make an episode of House, M.D. or The Good Doctor.
Such was the case with last week’s episode of Transplant. Dr. Bashir Hamed (Haq) treats a man with unexplained pain. The patient is obviously a man, the kind of man who would talk to Trump with tears in his eyes having never before cried in his life. Seriously, though, the patient is a man who has a daughter, who in turn has also suffered unexplained pain.
And it turns out that the explanation for both the father’s pain and the daughter’s pain is the same: the uterus. The father has a “blind uterus.” But the father has the option of a hysterectomy, whereas the daughter does not, because the doctors worry that she would regret it later.
The daughter visits her father in the hospital. The situation dredges up a lot of anguish for the daughter. Some of the doctors (and likely some of the viewers) regard her as shrill and strident. But the case provides a stark demonstration in fiction of a real-life problem: doctors not taking women seriously. Fortesa Latifi for HealthyWomen.org:
In a 2019 HealthyWomen survey, 45% of respondents said they didn't think their healthcare providers took their pain seriously. And there are facts behind those feelings: Women experiencing pain are more likely than men to receive a sedative prescription instead of a pain medication prescription.
The gender pain gap extends to the emergency room, where men wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving pain medication in instances of acute abdominal pain while women wait an average of 65 minutes in the same situation. Women are even half as likely as men to receive painkillers after a coronary bypass surgery.
Speaking from experience as a man, men are taken seriously even when they overreact to minor incidents after reading worst case scenarios on the Internet.
There’s a racial component to this. Suppose Sheldon Cooper gets bitten in the hand by a random cat. A doctor would do his best to reassure Sheldon that as long as there's no redness or swelling, there won't be any need to amputate his hand, nor to do anything more drastic than monitor the situation. Steve Urkel with the same kind of injury might get the same reassurance, but from a nurse rather from a doctor.
Black women with very serious diseases are more likely than white women to get misdiagnosed with less serious diseases, or worse, to be written off as hypochondriacs.
Doctors need to do better by women. Awareness of this disparity is only the first step.
Transplant airs on NBC Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. On tonight’s episode, according to TV Guide,
Bash finds himself at odds with his direct supervisor while they treat a couple of skydivers with a unique relationship; Mags speaks out against her supervising doctor; a mistake comes back to [haunt one of the doctors?]
In the commercial for tonight episode, Dr. Leblanc becomes bedridden. It will be taken seriously because she’s one of the main characters. The drama’s more likely to be about the ethics of treating someone with whom one has a personal relationship.
As for other shows that you might watch on Thursdays, like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Young Sheldon, those are not back with new episodes yet because of the now-resolved WGA strike and the still ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.