Bianca Cedes was in severe pain once a month, and every doctor she saw had the same answer: try a different birth control.
She did not arrive empty-handed. “I was having such severe pain and doing my own research and recording my own stats,” she said. What came back was a prescription pad. “Going from one doctor to the other, they’re both telling me to try new birth control,” she said. By her own count, that came to three types of birth control, two different pills and another IUD.
The reasons she was given for not looking are worth writing down. “They told me that unless I was in the middle of a flare-up, they weren’t gonna be able to see anything,” she said. And then the one that ends the conversation: “They’re just telling me, ‘Sorry, ovulation is just painful sometimes.'”
That is where she asked out loud. “And at this point I’m like, ‘Is it because I’m Black? Is it because I’m a woman?'” Her answer to the premise was simpler. “There are plenty of people in the world who are not in severe debilitating pain once a month.”
She eventually had imaging done. “I had my scans done, and I feel like a new person,” she said. “I have a diagnosis that I can work with now.” Then the part the appointments were supposed to deliver years earlier: “I have answers, and I don’t feel ignored.”
