From understanding how they talk about pain to understanding the barriers that society places on them, it's time to take a hard look at why our health care system is failing women.
Kelli Fleming of Brampton, Ont. has been in pain for almost her entire life.
When she was six, Fleming was hospitalized for hip pain. “I was quite tall as a young child, so they just felt that I grew too quickly,” Fleming, now 49, remembers. “But I have that exact same pain in my hips as I did when I was six.”
In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with arthritis, and later fibromyalgia. The pain feels “almost like having an elephant on your legs, while you’re pressed up against a hard surface,” she says. “I can’t lay on any one side for any length of time because the pain just pools, from my hip down to my knee.” If she doesn’t happen to move around while she sleeps, she’ll frequently be woken up in the middle of the night from the pain; that still happens about five nights a week.
And the pain in her back is relentless. “It’s like having a toothache, constantly,” she says. When she has to move, it feels like “chewing ice on a toothache.”
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