Bleed

Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care

By: Tracey Lindeman

Narrated by: Courtney Patterson

Have you ever been told that your pain is imaginary? That feeling better just takes yoga, CBD oil, and the blood of a unicorn on a full moon? That's the reality of the more than 190 million people suffering the excruciating condition known as endometriosis. This disease affecting one in ten cis women and uncounted numbers of others is chronically overlooked, underfunded, and misunderstood—and improperly treated across the medical system. Discrimination and medical gaslighting are rife in endo care, often leaving patients worse off.

Journalist Tracey Lindeman knows it all too well. Decades of suffering from endometriosis propelled the creation of BLEED—part memoir, part investigative journalism, and all scathing indictment of how the medical system fails patients. Through extensive interviews and research, BLEED tracks the modern endo experience to the origins of medicine and how the system gained its power by marginalizing women. Using an intersectional lens, BLEED dives into how the system perpetuates misogyny, racism, classism, ageism, transphobia, fatphobia, and other prejudices to this day.

BLEED isn't a self-help book. It's an evidence file and an eye-opening, enraging book. It will validate those who have been gaslit, mistreated, or ignored by medicine and spur listeners to fight for nothing short of revolution.

©2023 Tracey Lindeman (P)2023 Tantor

Validating

For someone with late-diagnosed endo, this strikes what feels (at least for me) like a good balance of vindicating, cathartic, and informative. There are so many sentences that sound like a more eloquent version of what’s been going through my head for most of my life. The self-consciousness of how to deal with doctors was spot on. And I appreciated having the problem of endo placed in the larger context of what entities, organizations, and systems are (de-)motivating meaningful change.

Spot on but so much anger

I was so hopeful that this book would address upcoming studies, trials and treatments that have been successful for others. I know the author was up front in the prologue that this book would only address the frustrations…I should have heeded that warning and stopped before starting.

The “anger” approach does not do it for me, so a huge portion of this book was a total miss. It was enlightening, but I was definitely forcing myself to continue.

I did appreciate someone shedding light to this condition without relief and I appreciated how she highlighted diversity with race and sexuality.

I completely agree and relate to a lot of her medical encounters, as I have also felt completely disregarded by OB/GYNs and Urologists. I have also needed to completely take matters into my own hands and advocate for myself with physicians who don’t have the time, patience or humility to listen. I just don’t think this needed to be an entire book, that no physician or researcher will bother to read or will be too offended to consider changing their ways. I also had a hard time with the author not taking into account that a hysterectomy isn’t the answer for everyone and (as she found out post surgery), the procedure doesn’t come without risks and adverse side effects! Also, since a lot of people with endo DO want children…so her fight seemed to be too personal to be generalized to most people with the condition.

I would have preferred this book to be a third of the length, given some of the author’s struggle, but then focused on what we can do from here…