I am sorry to inform you good sir or madam that you have taken part in what is known as malpractice. You should contact a lawyer immediately and change your health care provider if you are able to do so in whatever region you are located.

I can see from you talking about IUDs that you are a woman.

Which I believe answers your question, especially if you happen to be a non-white woman.

Doctors, Even female doctors, even female doctors of color, are incredibly dismissive of pain in women in general, and frequently hand wave it away as the woman being hysterical, over reacting, anxiety, etc etc.

I'm a guy, but I know this statistically, and I also know it from witnessing how doctors treated female family members who were in pain. . and from my personal witnessed experience, I'd say female doctors are even worse about it than male doctors.

also, on an unrelated note, does anyone else cringe when seeing/using the word female? even if its in a grammatically correct place to do so, thanks to fucking incels and their weird ass filling it with derision and attempting to turn the word into an insult?

Its because of crackdowns after the opioid epidemic years ago. Doctors were handing out oxycontin because the manufacturers marketed it as being non addictive. Apparently medical professionals actually believed this.

If you want something dont mention illicit drug use. But it probably won't make any difference

We're in the throes of a few crisis in the US:

1. a professional backlash against the over-prescription of opiates that were advertised as "non-addictive" which was actually a lie,
2. the monster the above crisis created: a domestic population of drug addicts who are either seeking drugs themselves or looking to non-addicts to acquire them,
3. constriction within the health insurance marketplace, demanding more and more justification for care and drug access,
4. an entire political system that's in the pocket of said industry who are incentivized to manufacture a world that maximizes health care spending while minimizing actual health care delivered.

You're female. No, doctors don't care. Ask my wife about how many different doctors she had to see before someone finally took an X-Ray of her back and found out one of her vertebrae is basically crumbling away.

You're female which is a detriment to appropriate medical care, being non-white is also a detriment to care. As others note there are also various systematic and medical reasons a doctor may not prescribe or use pain-relievers especially prior to understanding the problem.

I will say you need a new ob/gyn as there are recent updates that make pain relief a standard for iud insertion.

I'm going to mostly focus on the more legitimate answers since you already seem to know some of this was possibly / probably oversight / neglect and that they should have given you more.

a) the big one is pressure from regulatory agencies to prescribe less narcotics. Some of this is legitimate; a lot of the opiate crisis was started by pharma companies lying about how habit forming their medications are and intentionally encouraging dependency through overprescribing to sell more, but a lot of it is also just straight up puritanical and part of efforts to disrupt minority communities that are more affected by illicit drug use. In the end though, even if they don't share the stigmatizing view of it, there's little individual prescribers can do about it.

b) there's huge pressure in institutional environments to do ANYTHING to prevent falls. In addition to getting stingy with sedatives that might make you dizzy there's also pressure to have 1:1 care where people watch the patient in the bathroom and we used to even restrain old people to keep them from falling (although thank goodness that's finally falling out of favor). To get rid of that we'd have to accept that sometimes people just fall and crack their head open and die and that's life but we're just not there yet as a society. In the US everything needs to be someone's fault and if the doctor prescribes a sedating med and I give it and you fall, it's partially considered my and the doctor's fault. If we do ALL the environmental AND don't give sedating meds, it's considered less our fault.

c) There's legit specific medical reasons sometimes. If you had a bowel obstruction opiates are actually specifically contraindicated since they're the medications MOST likely to cause constipation. Now if surgical intervention was the best option it might make sense to give them anyway, but there may have been some waffling on what the best option was and they couldn't un-give you the meds if the final decision was to have you pass it with medication / enemas instead of surgery. And bowel surgeries have a huuuge possibility of sepsis and having to parts of the bowel removed and having to get regular vitamin shots for the entire rest of your life (once had a bypass patient so iron deficient she stated hallucinating) so that's not a decision to make lightly.

d) insurance in the inpatient environment likely didn't interfere with the medication prescription directly. they probably DID interfere with the surgical decision which may have interfered with the medication decision (see above). but the bigger issue is that insurance agencies in general do something waaay more insidious than just avoiding paying. they create and fill a psychological need to find someone to blame for things. every time something bad happens in the US we immediately try to figure out who to blame so we know who's paying for it. this is your health but also to your house and your car. the insurance is there more than just to pay but also to pay court fees if the blame isn't immediately placeable. if I give you a sedating medication and you fall, the insurance doesn't pay for it they make the hospital pay for it. So as a result the hospital pressures me to not give you that medication so you don't fall and leave them with the bill. to truly be rid of insurance companies in general we would have to fundamentally move away from blame culture. we would have to shift to a mindset of, wow that's horrible but we as other humans are going to take care of you. and like I said, we're just not there yet (but universal healthcare is definitely a step in the right direction; that kind of change can't start with individuals struggling to make rent).

I can just tell you that it's not universal: several doctors I've seen and know are very cautious when it comes to pain - both from own experience ("we will go strong with the pain killers for the best two days to prevent stress reaction from the body") to others ("we need to get the chronic pain under control fast, otherwise there's the risk of phantom pain developing even after we've tackled the issues") (not verbatim quotes of course but the gists).

It might not even be US generic but a regional or age thing in the doctors you've met - remember that usually everyone one of us has only a very limited insight into the whole medical industry.

I'm similar to you in terms of pain tolerance and I've walked away from a doctor who talked shit about pain in patients - but I've head way better experiences before so that didn't feel like I'm being stuck with this one medical "professional".

Wishing you the best of luck though! It's absolutely terrible when people don't take you seriously, especially if it's their job to help you :(

My experience, also in the US, has been the opposite: I get prescribed addictive painkillers "just in case".

Last time I had surgery, they told me to take ibuprofen for pain, and they also gave me a prescription for vicodin if the pain was too great. I live in an area with a significant opioid abuse problem, and they're handing it out like candy. They didn't tell me "call back if it's severe" or anything like that, they just gave me the prescription. I stuck with the ibuprofen, and realistically I could have done without even that.

I suspect your experience is largely due to sexism. I've heard so many stories like this, where doctors don't even think of taking women seriously.

Probably just thanks to insurance companies yet again

Doctors don’t get to make their own decisions anymore, they’re paid more like car mechanics and get a “job rate”.

Change a tire? It’s billed at $28 bucks. Doesn’t matter if it takes you 10 minutes or an hour. Air and balancing is included. Anything extra you don’t get paid for.

Gotta put in an IUD? You get $500 for the job, included is one shot of pain meds, the IUD, and one set of sterile equipment. Pain meds not working so great on this patient? Insurance doesn’t pay for extra, outpatient center doesn’t get paid for it or has to fight insurance for it.

Same for novocaine in dental work.

Insurance is terrible.

• The side effects of medication can interfere with diagnosis and treatment

• Pain can be a useful diagnostic indicator itself

• They see people in pain all the time, so it doesn’t seem like an exceptional state to them

• People with low pain tolerance, and people feigning pain to get opiods, are overrepresented in the population of people seeking medical care, so experience conditions medical providers to overweigh that as a potential factor

There was a nurse in a fertility clinic who was an addict and replaced the fentanyl drip with saline. Multiple women experienced agony during the procedure for extracting eggs. That procedure was to insert a huge syringe into the vagina, through the vagina wall, into the ovaries to suck up some eggs.

Many women experienced this with no pain medication at all and their complaints, even their screams were dismissed. Needless to say, when the addict nurse was discovered, they felt pretty silly.

Doctors have incredible tolerance for the suffering of women.

This is marginally related but in case anyone else doesn't know: dental procedures are not supposed to hurt.

I grew up terrified of dentists and ended up not going for nearly 10 years because of the fear/pain. I finally gave in when a tooth broke in half. The dentist I went to gave me the regular amount of numbing stuff and about 5 mins in saw in my face how much pain I was in and from then on she always gave me extra. I just have a high tolerance for the stuff and had never been receiving enough.

They probably get a ton of drug addicts asking for narcotics. And probably had made a lot of involuntary drug addicts over prescribing narcotics.

Some drugs are quite dangerous and it should be understood why doctors are wary of just prescribing it so easily.

Completely normal. I had hemorrhoid surgery and got 3 fucking pills. Recovery was supposed to be 1 week. It was more 4 months.

I live with constant back pain and fall all the time. They tell me to take ibuprofen. Which does fuck all.

Junkies know everything about getting meds.

A doctor would rather have someone in discomfort than deal with being investigated for over prescribing.

I heard a talk by a doctor who specialized in end of life hospice care.

New interns at the facility are averse to giving out pain meds to people who are literally dying because that's what they were taught.

My most recent experience in the UK is that they're fairly generous with painkillers. I was in an orthopedic ward - broken hips, ruptured tendons, that kind of thing. We all got oxycodone and paracetamol (plus laxatives to ward off the consequent constipation). I enjoyed the oxy but didn't become an addict.

Wtf? No this is not normal. My wife even gets pain meds for the Dental Hygienist, because she has a fear for the dentist or anything dentist related. I think it is absolutely unnecessary, but maybe she has hyper sensutive teeth or something. I'm not a doctor. Anyways, the pain meds help her, so she gets them, regardless of whether it is just phychological or not.

I think you're just suffering from the ridiculousness that calls itself the US healthcare system.

As others have said, it's a backlash against the pill mills, we have overcorrected.

I get migraines occasionally, and have Imitrex shots for them. I love that drug because it is not at all druggy - it leaves me clear headed with no migraine, there is a nauseating unpleasant rush when administered, then it's just like walking back in time, headache fades to nothing.

But a handful of times (like literally 6 times in 30 years) I get status migraine. Imitrex does not avail me, 4 days no food no water I will puke even a spoonful of water.

I used to be able to go to the doctor and get some shots with some opiate and fenergan. They would do one, I would still be puking and crying, they would come back every 20 minutes or so and do another until I was so far away from the pain it wasn't bothering me. Then I could sleep and it worked every time, even though it did not work by killing the pain immediately (painkillers don't work for migraine) the high plus sleep always worked. Maybe $50 -$100 total cost.

But the last two times I got this, the doctor couldn't do that, it was outlawed. They sent me to the emergency room. Cold IV in a cold room, some advil stuff that doesn't work, then send me home still hurting, can't sleep, headache 2 more days but I don't die from dehydration. $1,600 for a worse result.

I understand why they say the opiates don't work for migraine, they don't directly kill the pain. But the previous protocol worked, and with electronic health records, can they not tell this is a very infrequent event for me? I don't even like downers. I just want the headache to break and that was the only protocol that ever worked.

ETA: and it is spotty - when I had surgery to repair my finger, the doctor gave me 50 pills of oxy, he said hands can hurt bad. But mine didn't (and yeah I also have a tolerance for pain) and that many pills seem like enough to cause dependence, WTF? I kept a few for rescue med and tossed the rest.

The classic case of:

We just discovered a new thing with a specific use, let's sell it to EVERYBODY!

Turns out that the new thing is bad for people who don't fit a specific use case, so in order to prevent the wrong people from getting it, we must stop offering it to the people that DO need it.

I got surgically sterilized because the pain from that was less than what an IUD would have been.

The only pain I felt was for the initial IV stick. After that it was nothing.

I will refuse any painful procedure that doesn't have adequate pain relief. I don't care if I die.

Medicine keeps getting away with this shit because women just accept it. Endometrial biopsy? Only if I'm completely out. If not I guess I'll enjoy my hospice drugs while I'm dying.

IUD? Lol I just cut my shit out instead. I need hormonal treatment for endometriosis still, but I just take hormone blockers for it. Way better than dealing with sadists.

I'm too fed up to live through this shit anymore. I have no kids IDGAF.

Too many doctors getting in trouble for the general over-prescription of opiates.

Too many drug addicts come through the door too. Not an excuse, but imagine dealing with that every day and not getting hardened in some way.

Sometimes the person’s condition makes it so they have to avoid prescribing the strong stuff. Like let’s say your blood pressure is too low, or you got some other health conditions or meds you took recently where the combo is no good.

Unfortunately this absolutely happens, both by doctors and nurses.
My mother experienced something similar at the hospital when she had an examination for a disc herniation.
She was told not whine so much about it despite it was extremely painful for her to move. After they had the results, and it turned out she had a HUGE one, they all suddenly changed completely, because they could se on the images how bad it really was.
They thought she had 2, but when she was operated, it turned out to be only one that was so big it looked like 2 on the imaging.

Some doctors and nurses are assholes, that don't respect their patients, and don't believe when they have pains.

I can only tell you it's not like this in Germany but still dependant on doctors.

On one side you have those that know that pain can get chronic if untreated and they will employ countermeasures. No sense in needless pain.

On the other hand you have some bad doctors that are unaware and unempathic and can not relate to the illnesses they even treat. There you might have issues then.

They just expect you to choke on some ibuprofen or paracetamol, same for most of the western Europe tbf, even if care is way more affordable

Don’t know man but the doctors here be like “just take a paracetamol”.

The doctors care. The shareholders dont

Doctors see so many people seeking to fuel their addiction that they can no longer tell who isn't. Addicts seek out information on what people with rail problems say and how they act - they practice those things. As such they cannot tell who is real.

Is it training?

Yes. As you may or may not remember, the Sackler family spent billions on and made hundreds of billions off of getting the American south addicted to opiates over the 1990s and early 2000s. Every single doctor and hospital involved was sued by their former patients. There are still billboards up in some southern states advertising law firms that specialize in suing doctors over developed addictions.

So any doctor that graduated in the last 16 years has had one specific thing drilled into their head: Do. Not. Treat. Pain.

Because you will be sued if your patient is an addict or becomes an addict.

Is it the fact that becoming a doctor in the U.S. requires the kind of upper middle class upbringing that doesn’t tend to help people develop empathy?

This has always affected doctors in the US, but the medical profession is a calling regardless. If you want money there are so many better pathways, leaving exactly three reasons people become doctors:

1. They want control over life and death

1. They want the prestige of the title for themselves or their family

3: They have an uncontrollable natural urge to try to help others.

So 2/3rds of doctors are not going to fight their training and just try to prescribe pain meds as little as possible.

Of the remain 1/3rd of doctors or so, the ones that genuinely love helping others and want to deliver the best possible care, one bad experience with addicts can permanently change their attitude, and they may get hundreds of experiences per shift if they happen to do their residency in an ER inside any American city.

On top of all of this is the inherent gender and racial biases in medicine, and American medicine in general. Women's pain is taken less seriously. It was in medical textbooks world wide until the 2020s that black people felt less pain and were genetically more prone to addiction. There was a literal course in every MA, RN, LVN, MD, etc course about "how different races feel and express pain."

So if you want pain relief, you better have both the vital stats showing you are experiencing pain (which is awful for chronic pain sufferers who no longer have high BP/High pulse from their pain), and you better be a white man with a conservative lifestyle/look (because we know the gays are more likely to pop pills[This is literally in medical textbooks]), you better get lucky that you have a doctor willing to prescribe pain management, and even if you qualify at that point you better not ever ask for pain meds, period, regardless of your situation. As it only takes one single nurse or doctor to put drug seeking behavior on your chart to ruin your chances at ever receiving pain management ever again.

I think its a liability thing, people get hooked on painkillers, they don't want to be held responsible for prescribing it. Not sure how regulated certain drugs are, but probably a mix. Not sure why they would hold for certain ops they deem not bad enough. No great answer for this one, could be the system just sucks or there is no really great fix for it.

It's because you're a woman. It's double bad if you are also a woc. We are nowhere near close to even beginning to fix this. It's systemic, and no one in power in the medical field gives a shit. Because only women and POC suffer from this.

When the leading cause of the opioid epidemic is doctors overprescribing, I don't think yoir experience is typical.

Pain is a feeling. Feelings are for priests.