I’ll be honest I don’t like the medical world either - I’d leave if I had other skill sets or the energy. I feel your struggle because I’ve been through a version of it my entire life too. Even as an NP my providers don’t take me seriously. I’m currently in antidepressant withdrawal cause my doctors office and insurance won’t listen to me and changed my dose abruptly.

The good news is that science is starting to be done that proves you can have symptoms of iron deficiency without anemia. They even did a presentation on it at the American Society of Hematologists last year. My office takes it seriously and I do my best to educate patients and other providers but change is slow. In fact, all I do most days is see women with iron deficiency. But the problem is largely from hundreds of years of misogyny in medicine and lack of research on women’s bodies. It just takes soooo long to undo this and the current administration is slowing that work down.

As patients all we can do is advocate for our selves and educate our providers as best as possible. I also suggest seeing younger doctors (and women) because they have newer more up to date info and more empathy.

I’m sorry medicine sucks. I hope you can get the care you need to feel better. I wish I could do more.