But what started me on my quest was my experience last autumn. For a month, I experienced steadily worsening symptoms of chest pain, headache, blurriness of vision, difficulty concentrating, heart pounding that got worse when I tried to sleep, and weariness. I was told that it was lack of exercise, allergies, anxiety, my anxiety medication. It took my psychiatrist intervening and sending me to a cardiologist to finally discover my problem: pericarditis, a condition of the sac that surrounds the heart, and one that has potentially dangerous complications. I was lucky to get my diagnosis that quickly, but I didn’t feel lucky after a month of being told it was all in my head. I’ve spent the last year struggling to recover and buried in books that will inform my battle against the implicit biases that endanger thousands of women every year. I’ve carefully studied books that will support my self-advocacy and my fight to inform other women and fight for their and my own rights to be taken seriously at the doctor’s office or ER. The books I chose to recommend below have educated, shocked, and stung, but overall have made me a better ally and advocate in the fight to make healthcare equal. It is nearly impossible to get fair, unbiased healthcare in the United States unless you are a cis white male—and even then, the gender bias and disparity can hurt you. These books explore the bias in medicine against women, including information on the intersections with fatness, queerness, Blackness, and more. I have worked hard to read a wide variety of books in this field so that I could recommend you only the best, leaving out those that have misinformation or transphobic language. This is not to say this list is perfect, by any means, and I would love to hear any further recommendations or feedback. For additional reading, see these books about mental health written by women.
