Medical Gaslighting: A Woman’s Fight to Be Heard and Treated for Her Pain

May is Women’s Health Month, a time to raise awareness about women’s health issues and celebrate the strength and resilience of women. There isn’t a better example of this strength than the story of a VSI patient named Jakki. 

Jakki came to Dr. Haines after desperately searching for 20+ years to understand what was causing her debilitating back pain. Unfortunately, women are still fighting to be believed, especially in medicine. From being told “it’s in your head” to waiting years for a diagnosis, women are often dismissed by their doctors. This phenomenon is known as medical gaslighting, and it happens all too often. In fact, a staggering 70% of women report feeling ignored or disregarded in medical settings. Jakki’s story inspires all who feel ignored to never give up hope of finding true healing.

Experiencing Medical Gaslighting as a Teen

Jakki Maser’s pain journey began at just 13 years old, when she started experiencing sharp, electric pain in her back. Despite repeated attempts to find answers, she was told it was likely due to a sports injury she couldn’t remember or just a muscle imbalance.

“I remember a chiropractor told me it was sciatica and it was probably just because one of my legs was longer than the other. Then a doctor told me, you must’ve had an athletic injury, and I had said ‘no’ and he just laughed and said, ‘you probably just don’t remember.’ And I remember thinking – I would remember an athletic injury. He didn’t even look at me when he said it. He just looked at my parents and I felt that he just wasn’t listening to me,” Jakki remembers. 

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Fighting to Be Heard and Believed

The pain never went away. Instead, it intensified, disrupted her life, and went largely unaddressed for over two decades. Jakki was not quiet. She was not passive. She sought help from specialists, underwent scans, tried physical therapy, and did everything she could to advocate for her body. But each time, her symptoms were dismissed or minimized. She was told to stop using big words with doctors, not to mention her own research, and to avoid sounding “too smart” or “too dramatic.” Friends and even some professionals advised her to stroke egos just to be heard, and she often heard things like, ‘there’s no reason you should be feeling this kind of pain,’ or ‘I don’t see anything that would cause what you’re describing.’

She never gave up, pushing for more scans and tests. After years of persistence and complaining of tailbone pain, one doctor finally found the cause.

“I broke my tailbone during my first childbirth. It hurt for eight years. I had multiple scans. And I said, please check my tailbone while you’re looking at my back. And they kept telling me, it’s fine. It’s fine,” Jakki explains. “And then I had this horrible flare up where I was going numb from the waist down and the doctor was like, ‘well, there’s no reason for that, but your tailbone’s swollen’. And in that moment, I was like, I feel… so gaslit right now. I recognized that immediately. You’re making me feel crazy. I’ve asked for eight years about my tailbone. You told me it’s fine. And now you’re blaming my pain on that exact cause. I was very aware that was a gaslighting moment.”

Living Through Chronic Back Pain

That wasn’t a full explanation for the symptoms she was having and her life continued to be negatively impacted as her pain worsened. “For most of my life I thought this is just bad luck with my genetics. There’s nothing I can do about it so I just have to manage and be as positive as I can. But after I had my children, it got exponentially worse with each childbirth,” Jakki explains. “I had flare ups every two years and constant pain in between those.

At first I was giving things up…high school sports and college athletics and things like that. But then it became giving up things like holding my newborn babies and being able to sit on the floor and play with them. And then I really started to go downhill and not be able to do things like carry laundry baskets or car seats. And I felt like…my kids didn’t sign up for this. 

They have a mom that can’t do anything. My husband has to help me with everything. I mean, it really started to tear me down mentally and emotionally.”

Taking Control and Finding Bertolotti’s Syndrome

Eventually, Jakki took matters into her own hands. After 23 years of frustration at age thirty-six, she enrolled in continuing education classes to learn how to read her own medical scans. And when a CT report mentioned a “pseudoarticulation” — a false joint — something clicked. Because of her studies, she recognized it as a possible indicator of Bertolotti’s Syndrome, a condition where an extra vertebra partially fuses with the pelvis, causing severe and often misdiagnosed pain.

Her doctors hadn’t caught it. She did.

Curiosity Leads to Answers

Jakki’s breakthrough sent her to support groups and researching Bertolotti’s Syndrome experts, which led her to Dr. Colin Haines at VSI. From her home in Kansas, she arranged a telehealth consultation. 

A Doctor Who Finally Listens

By the end of the call, she says she knew she had to make the trip to see Dr. Haines. She says there were differences in that appointment: Dr. Haines listened, asked questions, validated her pain, and collaborated with her as an equal.

“Dr. Haines looked right at me and he said, ‘You need to understand that we treat patients, not pictures.’ And it just struck me so much to be seen as a person and to be believed,” she explains. “I asked him a lot of questions and he kept saying, ‘I want to figure this out with you.’ And he did. That willingness and curiosity was huge for me.”

A Life-Changing Treatment Outcome

The outcome? Life-changing. Jakki underwent surgery that included a spinal fusion and an artificial disc replacement. Within days, the numbness she had felt from the waist down vanished. By four months post-op, she was squatting, walking, and even carrying a laundry basket up the stairs — a feat her children celebrated like a marathon win.

She no longer has flare ups, can walk 3 miles, pick up her children, sit on the floor, and the only pain left is a little bit of nerve pain that is expected to dissipate over time. 

“I’m not running a marathon or doing anything like that, but I am getting back to carrying laundry baskets and being able to play with my kids,” Jakki says. “I can’t get those lost moments back of holding my babies, but I can do it now.”

Empowering Women to Advocate for Themselves

This isn’t just a story about one woman’s pain. It’s a story about a broken system that continues to silence and sideline women. Jakki’s experience highlights a deeper truth: that dismissing women’s symptoms, questioning their credibility, and minimizing their knowledge is condescending and dangerous.

Jakki now shares her story to empower others. Her message to women? Trust your body. If you know something is wrong, you are probably right. Educate yourself. Push for second, third, even tenth opinions. If someone says, “There’s no reason for your pain,” add the word “yet.” Do not give up until you find answers and someone willing to help you. 

And to doctors, her plea is simple but urgent: Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Stay curious. Ask questions. Partner with your patients. Believe women. Listen to them. Let them be experts in their own bodies. Because when we do, we don’t just save time. We save lives.

“Apathy is harm and being apathetic doesn’t mean blatantly doing something wrong or saying I just don’t care, but it’s not caring enough to prioritize your patient care over your billable hours, rushing them out the door and doing nothing,” Jakki says. “That is apathy and that is harmful. So I guess I would give physicians this call to action – be willing to say, ‘I don’t know, but I want to figure it out.”