Rachael Mahan, HS 3133.

50, Interview with Grandma

For this assignment I chose the third option of interviewing my grandmother. My

grandma is 74 and her name is Nancy. She lives in Hot Springs, Arkansas, so I called her and did

a phone interview.

When asked what the thinks is the most significant change in women’s health in her

lifetime, she answered that it was the change in how women and patients in general can be more

easily and accurately diagnosed now than they could years ago. She told me that doctors used to

just try to guess based on symptoms and things like that but now there are much more accurate

tests that can be run since there have been more advances in science and technology. When I

asked her, what has changed for the better versus what has changed for the worse, she said that

improvements in diagnoses have been for the best as mentioned above and also that nurse

practitioners have helped so that when the doctor is book up with appointments, she can still see

the nurse practitioner. However, she also said that along with this, that doctors have gotten too

busy. She told me that it has gotten harder and harder as the years go on to make appointments to

get into the doctor that she needs to see without waiting for a long time to see them. The other

problem she found that still needs to be improved is that too many doctors go into specialties

(because they tend to pay more) and so there are not enough general physicians. She said she

always feels that she has to come up with her own diagnosis before she can even go to the doctor

because she has to know which doctor to go to. For example, she could have a stomach ache and

not now if she needs to go to the gastroenterologist, gynecologist, or even the emergency room

for something like kidney stones or appendicitis. Lastly, when I asked her how women can be an

active part of these changes, she said she wasn’t sure how women could help make these

changes. However, she did say that women need to be a more active part of their own health to

help themselves. The way she explained this was in the same way I did about women checking
Rachael Mahan, HS 3133.50, Interview with Grandma

for breast cancer. She said they need to check for lumps and if they do find one then they need to

go to the doctor to follow up on it and get it checked. We discussed how things have changed

from her generation to mine because of the feminist movement and women becoming doctors

and getting more involved in their own health and in helping other women.
Rachael Mahan, HS 3133.50, Interview with Grandma

This assignment was very helpful for me. I learned a lot from my grandma about what

has changed for her and the health of women around her area throughout the years since she has

lived in hot springs for over 40 years and before that only lived about an hour away.

When she started talking about how so many doctors are in specialties now and therefore

you have to diagnose yourself and it takes so long to get into see your doctor, this really

resonated with me. I feel like it has been this way my whole life, so I can’t really see the change

that she is discussing for GP to many different specialists; I had a stroke in utero and have had

many health problems because of this. I have had at least 13 different types of specialists that I

have seen for a period of time over my entire life. This also carried over to when she talked about

having to diagnose yourself before going to the doctor because it takes so long to get in and

because they each only focus on one area, so if you are wrong and that is not the problem, then

you have to start all over again. This reminded me of my experience last November that carried

into this January. I had a severe kidney stone and I thought that was what the problem was

because I had one before and knew what it felt like. However, the ER doctors couldn’t find one

on the CT scan, so they sent me to a gastroenterologist and my gynecologist thinking it was a

cyst or intestinal upset. When neither of these turned out to be the problem, they decided to

check my gallbladder, well that wasn’t the issue either. They then scheduled me for a

laparoscopy to check for endometriosis. Luckily, I passed the kidney stone before I had this

done, so I didn’t endure surgery that wasn’t necessary, but this just goes to show what my

grandma was saying about the many different specialists. When the ER doctors were wrong, no

one checked anything except what was in their specialty which is why the stone wasn’t found

until I passed it. It just made me think that this probably has made the system worse and cause

some misdiagnoses or missed diagnoses because so many only look within their own specialties.
Rachael Mahan, HS 3133.50, Interview with Grandma

Overall, I am very glad I chose to interview my grandma because I feel like this is a

discussion we may not have had if I wasn’t assigned to interview someone for this class and this

was a wonderful way for me to see the things that she has experienced in her health throughout

the years and compare it with the changes that have occurred to affect my healthcare as I am

growing up.
Rachael Mahan, HS 3133.50, Interview with Grandma

Works Cited

Howell, N. (2018, November 14). Assignment 1- Grandmother Interview [Telephone interview].