A Montreal woman who was told by health-care professionals that she was too young for breast cancer but later diagnosed with it, has died from the disease. Valerie Buchanan was 32 when she died at the end of February.
“I keep asking myself why anyone, but selfishly, why her?” Chris Scheepers, Buchanan’s husband told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview. “She was a beautiful person. She was extremely driven, talented and positive. What really breaks me is our son won’t know the truly remarkable woman she was.”
Throughout 2020, Buchanan sought answers for a lump in her chest but had said she was reassured by multiple health-care professionals in Ottawa and Montreal that it was a benign cyst without sending her for imaging to confirm.
After 13 months, Buchanan eventually went to a private clinic and was diagnosed with Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer – a biologically aggressive subtype of breast cancer. Just a few months later, she learned it was Stage 4.
Oh I am not in any way saying sexism doesnt exist in medicine.
I am not a woman, but I have seen plenty how my female relatives were treated in ERs and just by their daily doctors, even by female doctors, to know that the sexism is just ingrained in the institution of medicine itself.
and no, that does not make it right, in case anyone tries to say i’m arguing in favor of sexism or something. Im just saying its not a one off thing, that its downright institutional and that even female doctors are grossly guilty of it.
as a side note, I feel gross for saying female, even when its directly appropriate term to use, because of how incels have poisoned the word. blegh.