A Labour MP has described how she was left in excruciating pain following a ruptured cyst on her ovary – but felt “instantly dismissed” by doctors because “it only happens to women”.
On Tuesday, Louise Haigh told MPs that she was rushed to A&E after collapsing in parliament during a crucial round of Brexit votes last year.
“I ended up staying in St Thomas’ for almost a week hooked up to an IV and pumped full of antibiotics and painkillers before I was eventually diagnosed with a cyst on one of my ovaries having ruptured and caused an infection,” the Sheffield Heeley MP said.
But last week she found herself in exactly the same situation, she told a Westminster Hall debate, describing it as “Groundhog Day”.
Doctors gave her painkillers and sent her away, she said, telling her “that cysts rupture in women all the time”.
“And it very much seems that that has been allowed to happen and is allowed to go without treatment and without any knowledge of the cause because it only happens to women,” Haigh said.
“On leaving hospital last week I cried all the way home. In part, because of the pain, but mostly because I was furious that I had been so instantly dismissed and that I had been told that I would simply have to live with a syndrome which would cause so much pain and risk on a monthly basis.
“I knew that countless other women would have been dismissed just as I was and gone home feeling exactly the same.”
Periods must become a normal topic of conversation, Haigh said during the debate about endometriosis, a debilitating and painful condition where cells like the ones in the lining of the womb are found elsewhere in the body.
She added: “The lack of education, awareness and medical research we currently have dismisses women and our health problems. It tells us that our pain is less important and that our fertility is irrelevant.”