Why is Women's Health Important to Me?

My interest in women’s health or femtech began in 2020 when I started my Master of Public Health at USC but my interest in my own health started 6 years earlier in 2014 when I was diagnosed with cancer at 18. From my experience, I noticed that as someone with ample support and privilege from my parents and doctors, I still wasn’t always being listened to.

It took almost 4 months to get diagnosed because different ER and Urgent Care doctors kept dismissing my pains as other things; maybe that fact that I also didn’t have a primary care physician at the time played into it since there was no baseline of labs or pain tolerance to go off of. Looking back at this now, I see parallels that women experience when they go seek medical advice from doctors – their pain being ignored, or their symptoms being explained as something else altogether without trying to put all the pieces together first. This is why I think femtech and women’s health in general are so important – women’s bodies are not just like men’s bodies but smaller. Women’s bodies are different. They need their own standard of care when it comes to physical, mental, hormonal, and emotional health.

Granted, I don’t think the women’s health lens would have necessarily gotten me diagnosed faster but it did spur different questions down the line that should have gotten asked earlier. After a CT scan that showed a mass in my chest, a biopsy was done the next day. The morning of my surgery I was sitting in pre-op and an older man who was accompanying him wife asked me what I was in for, and I don’t remember if I answered or my dad did – after which he replied, “but you’re too young”. But all I wondered about that moment was why did he ask? That was my first experience with telling someone that I had cancer, and it was the moment I learned that I would have to prepare everyone first before I dropped that on them.

Two weeks later, I was sitting in a room in my GP’s office with my parents, my GP, my oncologist, and the office’s NP where they all were discussing my treatment plan. The NP interrupted the conversation to ask me if anyone had discussed freezing my eggs with me yet. The idea seemed laughable to me in the moment. I was 18. I’d graduated high school 3 months prior. Just 3 months ago I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom during class and now I had to make this choice. My oncologist said he was only comfortable waiting two weeks before starting chemo since my tumor was fast growing. You need at least four weeks for the egg-freezing process. The choice for me then, is also the same choice I’d make now. I started chemo the following week.

That was my first exposure to a woman specific health topic. Oncofertility is now something that fascinates me. I think that is why women’s health, especially reproductive health is so near and dear to me because I think everyone should have all the education, opportunity, and access to make the best choice for themselves and their bodies.

#oncology #womenshealth #oncofertility #healthtech #healthcare #bloodcancerawareness