I am an early 50’s male, which makes me categorized as having less potential for doctors to listen to me when I tell them what is wrong with me. I have always experienced this with male doctors. When I was in the Marine Corps and I went to medical, it was always, we can’t find anything wrong, take some Motrin and come back in the morning. Navy medicine had always been quick to dismiss anything that wasn’t obvious and overprescribe Motrin. My wife and I had a ton of Motrin when we left the Marine Corps. It was the Navy’s drug of choice. I think the only two times Navy medical took me seriously was when I was running with my platoon in Florida and then the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground and they were putting an IV in my arm. It seems that I was not properly acclimatized when I returned from deployment. They rushed me to the hospital and pumped 3 liters of fluids into me before releasing me.

The other time was when I had a nasty skin infection on my leg and they couldn’t get it to go away. Of course, they pumped me full of antibiotics and cleaned the wound daily for a week. That was the first time I was given Levofloxacin (Levaquin). I had been prescribed it later as a civilian as well, and then I suffered from a tendon rupture in my left calf, which was likely related to Levaquin.

I was with the Boy Scouts as a leader on a camping trip, We were playing soccer and I had the ball and was heading to the goal to take a shot when I fell to the ground and heard a pop, I had excruciating pain in my left leg, it was an instant 10 on the scale for a brief second or two and then I was down. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t support any weight on my leg. I was taken off the field and I rested my leg and watched the boys finish the game. As we were leaving for home in the morning, I toughed it out and lived with the pain in my leg for the day and packed up in the morning with the aid of my son. The worst part was the two-hour drive back home and of course, I was one of the drivers as well.

Long story short, it was a grade 2 tendon injury (partial tear), which caused me to be on crutches for about a month. I’m pretty sure the only reason the doctor listened to me was the swollen black and blue calf muscle on my left leg.

So going back to doctors not listening to males, looking online this seems to be a problem with a fair amount of men. I’m not sure if this is because men are supposed to be tough or if the doctors just don’t want to deal with a whining male. But regardless, at least for me, when I go to the doctor I want them to listen to me.

When I got out of the Corps, we found a family practice doctor who was a female. She was great until she left medicine in the early part of 2008. We couldn’t find a doctor who had good reviews and was taking new patients, so we bounced around from an urgent care facility to an urgent care facility, mostly Patient First. In 2017 we finally located a female doctor who was taking patients, but it just didn’t work out well.

But when I had to see a male doctor I was usually told that there was nothing they could do, not for the pain in my groin or the UTI, or my foot when a door fell on it.

So, why am I telling you all this? There tends to be some bias against males getting any type of diagnosis for an “invisible illness”:

• Multiple Sclerosis = Multiple Sclerosis is at least two to three times more common in women than in men. – Source National Multiple Sclerosis Society
• Fibromyalgia = Fibromyalgia predominantly affects women — as many as 90 percent of cases are diagnosed in females, according to U.S. government statistics.
• Trigeminal Neuralgia = The incidence of new cases is approximately 12 per 100,000 people per year; the disorder is more common in women than in men. – Source National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Conversion Disorder = Among adults, women diagnosed with conversion disorder outnumber men by a 2:1 to 10:1 ratio. – Source National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Depression = The prevalence of major depression is higher in women than in men. – Source National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Anxiety = Women have consistently higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders. – Source National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome = Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a chronic condition that predominantly affects women.  – Source National Institutes of Health (NIH)

But trust me, my symptoms are 100% real.