Narrator: An ordinary college morning turns into a nightmare. A young woman steps into the shower, only to be seized by a sudden, stabbing pain in her abdomen, so intense it forces her to collapse. Shaken and confused, she crawls to the mirror, but the reflection staring back isn't just her own—it's the haunting image of her mother. This terrifying moment was the beginning of Abby Norman's long, agonizing journey through the American healthcare system, a journey she chronicles in her unflinching memoir, Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain. The book is not just a personal story of chronic illness; it is a searing indictment of a medical establishment that has historically dismissed, ignored, and misunderstood women's suffering.

Narrator: Pain is a deeply personal, subjective experience, yet the medical system attempts to quantify it with a simple tool: the 1-to-10 pain scale. Norman argues this scale is a flawed and often cruel instrument. When she first arrives at the hospital, doubled over in agony, a nurse asks her to rate her pain. How does one assign a number to a sensation that is all-consuming? Is a 7 a scream, while an 8 is a blackout? This system, she explains, fails to capture the quality, duration, or emotional toll of pain, reducing a complex human experience to a single, inadequate digit.

This struggle for objective measurement is not new. Norman recounts the bizarre dolorimetry experiments of the 1940s, where researchers at Cornell University burned the hands of women in labor to create a universal unit of pain called the "dol." They wanted to compare the pain of a burn to the pain of childbirth. But the women in the study pointed out the absurdity of the task, explaining that the two sensations were completely different in quality and duration. The experiments failed to produce an objective scale, proving what patients have always known: pain cannot be so easily measured. Norman’s own experience, where her initial self-rating is met with skepticism and she is sent home with little more than cranberry juice, illustrates how these inadequate tools can lead directly to the dismissal of legitimate suffering.

Narrator: For centuries, women's health issues have been viewed through the distorted lens of "hysteria," a catch-all diagnosis historically blamed on a "wandering uterus." Norman demonstrates how the legacy of this concept continues to poison modern medicine, leading doctors to dismiss legitimate physical symptoms as products of anxiety, stress, or emotional instability.

The tragic story of comedian Gilda Radner serves as a powerful case study. In the 1980s, Radner experienced debilitating fatigue, fevers, and severe pain. For ten agonizing months, doctor after doctor dismissed her concerns, attributing them to stress or even her Jewish heritage. By the time she was finally diagnosed, she had Stage IV ovarian cancer. Her husband, Gene Wilder, recalled that when the diagnosis finally came, Radner cried, but then said, "Thank God, finally someone believes me!" Her relief at being validated, even with a terminal diagnosis, speaks volumes about the psychological trauma of being disbelieved. Norman connects this to the experiences of figures like Karen Armstrong, who was treated with psychoanalysis for years before being correctly diagnosed with epilepsy, showing a clear, devastating pattern of medical gaslighting.

Narrator: Norman’s own diagnosis, endometriosis, becomes a lens through which she examines a much larger systemic failure. Endometriosis is a debilitating condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside of it, causing chronic pain, inflammation, and sometimes infertility. It affects an estimated one in ten women, yet it remains shockingly underfunded and misunderstood. A search on PubMed, a medical research database, reveals over 30,000 pages of research on liver disease, but only around 1,800 for endometriosis, despite affecting a similar number of people.

Norman argues that this is not just a medical oversight but a social justice issue. She quotes social epidemiologist Jhumka Gupta, who calls endometriosis a "social pathology," rooted in gender inequality and societal attitudes that devalue women's health. The condition is often misconstrued as just a "bad period," and its narrative is overwhelmingly framed around fertility. This narrow focus ignores the daily suffering of patients and excludes those who do not fit the typical mold. Norman shares the story of Ren, a transgender man with surgically confirmed endometriosis, who felt dehumanized by medical resources that insisted on framing it as a "woman's disease." By showing that endometriosis can and does affect cisgender men as well, Norman shatters the myth that this is simply a "period problem," arguing for a more inclusive and urgent approach to research and care.

Narrator: Faced with dismissal from doctors and the slow progress of medical science, Norman realizes that to survive, she must become the foremost expert on her own body. This transformation from patient to advocate is the book's central, empowering arc. She spends countless hours in medical libraries, teaching herself to read scientific papers and understand complex terminology. She even observes an autopsy to gain a visceral understanding of the human body, confronting her own mortality to better fight for her life.

Her relentless self-education culminates in a stunning moment of vindication. A year after her first surgery for endometriosis, she continues to experience a specific, localized pain that her doctors dismiss. Armed with her research, she builds a case, arguing that her appendix, though appearing normal on scans, could be affected by endometriosis. Her doctor, Dr. Wagstaff, is skeptical, telling her, "You’re either brilliant or the most well-educated hypochondriac I’ve ever met." He agrees to perform a second exploratory surgery. When Norman wakes up, he confirms her theory was correct: her appendix was chronically inflamed and had been the source of the pain. It was a victory born not of medical authority, but of a patient’s refusal to be silenced. In that moment, Norman proves that while she never wanted to be right—she only wanted to be well—the path to wellness required her to trust her own expertise above all else.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Ask Me About My Uterus is that the dismissal of women's pain is a deeply ingrained, systemic failure with devastating consequences. Abby Norman’s journey reveals that for countless women, the healthcare system is not a place of healing, but a battlefield where they must fight to be heard, validated, and believed.

The book is a powerful call to action, not just for patients to become their own fierce advocates, but for the medical community to fundamentally change its approach. It challenges doctors to listen with humility, to look beyond the numbers on a pain scale, and to honor the profound knowledge a person has of their own body. For anyone who has ever been told their pain is "all in their head," this book is a validating roar, a reminder that your experience is real, and your fight for wellness is a righteous one.