Have you seen women working through sickness in the office because they are saving it for a greater emergency? Well, women have been taught an extraordinary trick – to function while unwell.
We call it strength.
Sometimes it is.
But mostly it is the reason a symptom survives for six months without a doctor ever seeing it.
We call our headache stress. The exhaustion becomes motherhood. The stomach pain is dismissed as “just gas”. The breathlessness becomes lack of exercise. The abnormal bleeding becomes hormonal changes.
And because she can still go to work, pack the school bag, attend the meeting, and run the family, nobody, including sometimes the woman herself, thinks she is sick enough to stop.
But perhaps there is another question we need to ask.
Do women ignore their symptoms, or have women become accustomed to having their symptoms ignored?
We were having an interesting discussion regarding taking care of oneself in The She Saga group the other day. Is it because we are careless, or are we taught our discomfort is trivial?
Research gives us an uncomfortable answer – both things happen.
A large analysis covering 112 acute and chronic diseases found that women experienced longer intervals between symptom onset and diagnosis than men for most of the conditions studied. In one dataset, women had longer time-to-diagnosis in 110 of the 112 conditions examined.
That doesn’t prove that every woman is dismissed, or that every delay is caused by discrimination.
But it does make the question difficult to ignore.
Because sometimes dismissal doesn’t sound like dismissal.
Sometimes it sounds like this.
“Slow down!”
She held the side of the seat.
The car was moving at full tilt.
“I don’t feel very well. Just slow down.”
He looked at her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I just feel uneasy.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Uneasy? You don’t trust my driving now?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what? I have been driving cars for 10 years now. Girl, you think I can’t drive?”
Her stomach turned.
The pressure in her chest hadn’t disappeared.
But suddenly she was no longer talking about that.
She was explaining herself.
“No, I’m just feeling uncomfortable.”
“It’s all in your head. You just want another reason to insult my skills. This time it is driving.”
And there it was.
A physical sensation had quietly been moved into the department of imaginary things. Anxiety, fear, drama.
She stopped arguing.
Because sometimes it is easier to doubt your body than to win an argument about it.
Then a few weeks later, she noticed something else.
She was bleeding unusually. Not her normal period; she knew it was different.
“I should see a doctor.”
“You should,” he said.
“Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
The good, diligent husband and the supportive partner would absolutely accompany his wife to the doctor.
The appointment was made.
And then his boss announced an important meeting.
On exactly that day.
“I completely forgot,” he said. “Can we do it next week?”
She was irritated.
But it wasn’t an emergency. Or so she told herself.
“Fine.”
Next week arrived.
The school had examinations; there were some pre-planned travels; there was work.
Then another week.
Then another.
The bleeding continued.
She continued too.
Because that is what women are remarkably good at.
Continuing.
Until one afternoon, she fainted.
Only then did everybody become concerned, and it became urgent.
Then everyone asked, “Why didn’t you go to the doctor earlier?”
And perhaps that is the cruellest question.
Because sometimes the answer is:
She tried.
But the diagnosis gets delayed because there are other priorities or self-dismissal. Women in different studies described attributing symptoms to menstruation, menopause, ageing or ordinary fatigue; some hid symptoms, used over-the-counter medicines or postponed care because of family and household responsibilities.
That is not simply “women don’t care about their health.”
It is a complicated chain. The story isn’t simply:
Woman ignores symptom → disease becomes advanced.
Sometimes it is:
Woman notices → woman normalises → woman postpones → woman finally speaks → someone minimises → woman doubts herself → woman postpones again.
A research into breast cancer symptoms tells a similar story.
One study of 425 women with newly discovered breast symptoms found that 22% waited more than three months before consulting a doctor. Among women who were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer, prolonged delay was more common. Other priorities could take precedence over their own health.
So perhaps by the time everybody takes the symptom seriously, the body has been shouting for months.
There is a particularly uncomfortable irony here.
We tell women:
“You should take better care of yourself.”
But taking care of yourself requires something that many women have very little of: the luxury of prioritising yourself.
A mother who postpones an appointment because her child’s exams are approaching isn’t necessarily careless.
A woman who goes to work despite exhaustion isn’t necessarily unaware.
A wife who says, “I’ll go next week because my husband can’t accompany me today,” isn’t necessarily incapable of making her own medical decisions.
And a woman who keeps functioning despite pain isn’t necessarily blessed with some extraordinary biological ability to tolerate it.
Sometimes she has simply been trained by life to believe that her discomfort is negotiable.
The husband who calls her uneasiness anxiety.
A partner that calls her bleeding “hormonal.”
The family who says, “You’re probably stressed.”
And finally, the woman herself who says:
Maybe they’re right.
Maybe that is why the question shouldn’t be:
“Why didn’t she take care of herself?”
Perhaps we should sometimes ask:
“When she first said something was wrong, did anyone listen?”
Because women do take care of themselves.
They just don’t always have the luxury of treating themselves as the emergency.
And perhaps the most dangerous symptom isn’t always the pain.
Sometimes it is the moment a woman learns to say:
“I’ll manage.”
SREEPARNA SEN
