Because mastodon is like a 99% male audience, I will say this: if you have an aging mother you are in relationship with and care about, do NOT make her go through medical stuff alone. I am skilled & mean enough to fight through medical stuff and even so you would not believe how bad it is. Just accept that you cannot imagine.
I talk to a lot of people's aging moms and they are abandoned & alone even in nice families. I don't care how awkward it is, you have to try to ask them about it.
Describing the situation in one particular country in a toot in international Fediverse without ever mentioning which country's situation that toot refers to: In my experience, that's mostly done by toot authors from the USA. Here, too?
I briefly tried to determine country of origin from the various resources linked from @grimalkina 's profile, but failed. (No impressum, so she's highly unlikely to be a European author.)
I am summarizing over experiences and conversations I've had with European women in these patient communities, Canadian women, AND women in South America and US, so I felt comfortable speaking about this as a shared issue across many systems. I have family in the UK, EU, Canada, US. My main patient chat represents all those regions and 10+ countries.
Don't EVER speak about my labor on women's health in this objectifying, dismissing, asshole reply guy way again.
@dj3ei Here's some research relevant to women in Germany including monitoring from your own health monitoring infrastructure:
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/31/Supplement_3/ckab164.778/6405271?login=false
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6790957/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26818655/
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8277
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6288397/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19564209/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8864567/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2025/778519/IUST_STU(2025)778519_EN.pdf
Yes, @grimalkina! I'm Canadian, we have social healthcare unlike many in the US, and still I heartily endorse this message. I've also dealt with the German healthcare system (even more baffling than here).
The difficulty is not just with healthcare systems, but mysogyny, disrespect of the elderly, failure to listen, bullying ... and these can and do go on everywhere. 👍
I'm happy I called the original toot "good stuff" all along. Incidentally, I still do.
I made the mistake thinking this reflects on the USA system only. (I've heard bad things about the USA's medical system.) I was honestly mistaken, had no intention to narrow or weaken.
And I made the even bigger mistake of just grumbling, instead of simply asking, as @sennoma correctly pointed out.
I do apologize for both these mistakes.
@MostlyBlindGamer @grimalkina @dj3ei as I fight my way to the help I need (me, a stubborn woman, with a lifetime's experience of fighting with doctors), I am constantly aware of how many women must get left in the dust, un-helped - because they don't have language to push back, or are too polite, or don't know where the loopholes are, or are simply too exhausted to continue.
When it comes to doctors: it needs a good BS detector, research skills, courage to say NO. Sick folks may need a helper.
Thanks for making the international scope of your original toot transparent!
I underestimated the scope of your work. Please kindly accept my apologies!
Cat Hicks
Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦
MostlyBlindGamer