Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Linked-In and is shared with permission by Olga Lucia Torres.
In college, a clinician told me I was overdoing it. Then moved on to the next patient. I had lupus. It would take seven more years to find out.
In my years as an attorney, the dismissal got more polished. “You’re overworking.” “Have you tried therapy?” No one ordered the right tests. No one connected the symptoms. No one looked for what was actually causing them.
When I started doing advocacy work with the Lupus Foundation of America, I heard the same story from women across the country. Different clinicians. Different cities. Same dismissal.
That is not a coincidence. That is a pattern.
What gets missed. And what gets written instead.
Lupus is two to three times more prevalent in Latina women than in white women. It attacks the kidneys, the heart, the brain. It can kill you. And it is routinely missed because clinicians are quicker to attribute our symptoms to stress, lifestyle, or anxiety than to look for what is actually causing them.
When the diagnosis gets missed long enough, something else happens. It gets written down.
“Non-compliant.” “Difficult.” “Dramatic.” These words enter the chart and follow a patient for years. Nearly 70% of healthcare professionals hold moderate levels of implicit bias against Latina/o patients. Separately, studies show that explicit clinician attitudes include the perception that Latina/o patients are less likely to take responsibility for their own care โ and more likely to be labeled non-compliant. That bias does not stay in the clinician’s head. It travels into the medical record. And the next clinician reads it before they ever read you.
Before you leave your next appointment, ask your clinician one question: what did you rule out before you decided this was stress?
Seven years. Multiple clinicians. One word none of them said: lupus.
๐ธ ๐๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ช๐ด ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ด๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ข๐ญ๐ฌ ๐ต๐ฐ ๐๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐๐ถ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ด ๐๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐๐ ๐ 2022.
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