The Worst Headache of Her Life: ER Triage, Pain Scales & Female Pain with Golda Arthur

Episode 6 • 15th April 2026 • The Hairy Chin Podcast • Spencer Moore

Hi, Spencer. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really psyched to be talking to you. I'm so excited that you're here and honestly, it's an honor to have you. For those of you who don't know Goda Arthur, she is an audio producer with a 20 year experience in journalism as well. She has launched and run podcasts, including one of her own that she hosts called Overlooked, which is a beautiful podcast about female health and all of the areas that are overlooked. And it's actually through that podcast that I had this spark of this conversation to have with you today because you released an episode in December. It was about going to the ER and dealing with pain. So I really want to talk about what it was like for a woman going to an emergency room in New York. It was very crowded. You are in pain and you are terrified. Walk me through what happened and what made you think, wow, I really need to go to the emergency room. December 28th and

it started with just a blinding headache that came out of nowhere. And the sensation, Spencer, it's so hard for me to even like find the words. This is what I do for a living. I find the words and to describe this pain, it was difficult to find the words, but it was this headache. Now that I think about it mostly on the right side of my head and it must have lasted somewhere between 90 seconds and two minutes max. But of course it seemed endless when it came off. And the pain was so bad that I had to like shut my eyes and I couldn't open them again for the duration of that kind of intense period. And you know, I've never had a headache like that before. I tend to get headaches in the back of my head and in my neck. And when I spent too much time on the laptop, which I do all the freaking time. So I'm trying to manage that as well. But this was really extraordinary. It really felt like it was within, like from the inside of my skull and the intensity, it didn't go away, but it kind of reduced. It kind of dropped a little bit after those initial two minutes. And I thought, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm not going to do what I usually do, which is maybe it'll be fine. And let's see what happens. And I just thought, I'm just going to go to the ER. And I live about 10 minutes away from Elmerst Hospital in New York City in Queens. Elmerst was the epicenter of COVID when coronavirus came to New York. And it's a huge public hospital here. And I'm like 10 minutes away on foot. But I walked over and I just sat there and I thought, okay, I'm just going to get this scene to really because it was, it scared me. Of course, it scared me. I was just like, where's this coming from?

They triaged me fairly quickly. And I say quickly because quickly is a relative term. Like, I don't know, you know, if you're listening to this, wherever in the world you are, like, nobody just walks in and out of ER today. Right. It's like hours. It's always hours. And to clear the schedule type of thing. Absolutely. And I was just saying, the next 12 hours, I have to hurry. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I did that. And that's also why in general, I kind of hold back from going to ER because it's like, do I have the time for this? And I didn't even think that thought because it was bad. And when I went in to see a nurse to do like that initial check, they were like, basically, the first thing is like, are you dying right now? Right. That's how that's what the first that's what triage is there for. Yeah. Will you be dead imminently? Turns out I was not going to be dying imminently. So hooray. And so they ushered me into the the waiting room and I just put the hood over my head. Yeah. And sat there. So I was just like a lump, just like a coat in the corner. So I'm curious about what that triage looks like. You know, how did you describe the pain to the nurse when you're in there? What did you say about what you felt?

Yeah. And it's you're right in that triage is a really important moment. And I think and this is this is just me. I speak for myself. Something very gendered happened in that moment of triage. Right. So two things. I think if I'm remembering this correctly, the triage nurse asked me, is this the worst headache you've ever had in your life? And I thought to myself, well, that's a big statement. You know, I was like, um, yeah, yeah, I think so. And I said it just like that. Right. I was not like, ma'am, this is the worst headache I've ever had in my life. You need to do something about it right now. There was like, you know, I just thought it was a strange phrase, a strangely non-medical phrase for a medical person to be using. But the answer to the question was, well, actually, yeah, I guess it is. And then the second thing that happened, of course, is the thing that happens to all of us when we are faced with a physician or a health care provider and talking about pain. She said, um, scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt? Right. There's that pace. Scale up one to ten, how much does it hurt? Yeah. And Spencer, it hurt an eleven. And I think I said eight. Right. And I don't know why I did that. So normal, though. I don't know why I said that. One hundred percent. Yeah. And I think I put this, I did a post on this on LinkedIn and somebody else as well wrote in to say like, oh, my God, I do this all the time. I downgrade my pain because I don't want them to think I'm a wuss or I don't want them to think I'm being overly dramatic or except I do. I really think this is a dendered thing because I think, you know, when it's when you're asking a man and, you know, listen, some of my best friends are men. I love men. I'm just saying that, you know, men will be like, what are you talking about? There is no scale like this is off the charts, lady. Now, I know men who have said that, in fact, in response to pain. So that's based on something. And I'm not assigning any judgment to it. OK, I'm not assigning any judgment to what women do with the number and what men with the do with the number. I'm saying this is how it is. And so I look back on that and I think to the minute I said it, the minute I said eight and then she moved on to the next question, I thought to myself, like, why did I do that? Why? Why can't I just tell her, man, it's like it's not it's not even a one to ten thing. You know, it's really, really bad. But I suppose in my head, I was like, well, it was really bad for two minutes. And then now it's like I'm here. I walk here. So I guess it's, you know, was that kind of strange thing that we do when we when we when we try to downplay whatever it is that we've got going on. So I got mad at myself like after she passed me through to whatever, I got mad at myself for for doing that. And that is when I started to think about the pain skill. Yes. And I was like, well, like, where the hell did this come from? And how is that going to help the triage nurse at all when my eight, you know, your eight Spencer might not be my eight. We have exactly this. So, so, so subjective. So objective. And I thought, you know, I should have just said, listen, please take this seriously. It's really crazy. I've never had anything like this before, but I didn't say any of that. So when they had me waiting in the waiting room, I was sitting there like a lump with my puffy coat hood over my head and just thinking about the pain scale and getting kind of mad about it. Yeah. And the headache at that point was throbbing. It was like this dull throbbing and the lights and the beeps and the noise and everything else that was going on did not make anything better.

And so I was just miserable at that point. Yeah. I'm pretty miserable. There are a lot of things I think about when you're explaining that triage experience. So when she said, was it the worst headache of your life? One, that is a very broad question. But two, they're looking for our responses. Do we say yes immediately with conviction? Yes. It was the worst headache. Or do we say, like you said, and you had to think about it because it's such a broad question. And you said, well, maybe, yeah, that doubt of a response. I know that physicians are trained to hear how we respond to things. They are trained to see if we're thinking about it. Is it a yes? Is it no? Is it a maybe? I do think that there's kind of this inherent, whether it's been passed down to us or whatever it is, that women believe that they don't want to be as honest as they need to be. Maybe perhaps they don't feel that they have the permission. And I think that very much translates across communicating pain. It's a hard thing to do. Yeah. And then so I have two reactions to what you just said. And the first is this phrase, the worst headache I've ever had in my life, turned out to be code. And I'll skip sort of to do to the almost end of the story. But the health care provider who saw me said to me as they were discharging me, if it comes back, comes straight back to the ER and tell the triage nurse, use this phrase, this is the worst headache I've ever had in my life. Right. You know, right there is like this little bit of a translation gap between the language that health care providers use and want to hear from you. And then they put you in kind of a different category. And me overthinking the question of like, that's an interesting question. You know, because it's like such a superlative that I kind of wasn't expecting it. But it turned out to be code. So if you say that, if you go in and you say this is the worst headache ever, you know, it kind of puts you in the category of like, I have chest pains, right? You come into the ER, chest pains, and it's a whole other like decision trees that they're making. You go a different route, everything happens much faster. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, you know, while I was sitting there and fuming underneath my coat, I was thinking about this book by Gabrielle Jackson called Pain and Prejudice. And I read it around the same time as I read another fabulous book by Maya Dusenberry called Doing Harm. And both of these look at how the medical system and medicine and health care for that matter has is like deeply sexist basically. Yes. And that has not taken women's health into account in terms of how it was built. It's been medicine is built for men, basically. And that is not contested by anybody. I don't think anyway. And so, Gabrielle, particularly in her book, you know, was so she's written so much about the language that women use to describe pain. So you take the phrase stabbing pains, for example, every woman I know has experienced it or is like it doesn't bat an eyelid when I use the term stabbing pains. But as it turns out, studies have found apparently that men don't use the term stabbing pains as often. And we don't know if it's because they don't feel it as stabbing or it's just not part of the vocabulary that they're that they're using. Like if the nature of the pain is unique to women or if the language is unique to women, which is great. So we as women, you describe our pain in certain ways that has been interpreted as overly dramatic. And so that's why we kind of roll it roll it back. But the language down like down to the language. So do think this is a communication piece, right? Of what absolutely health care providers are hearing and what we're saying. And there's a really wide gap in between that I think needs to be talked about and dealt with. I absolutely agree. And, you know, when I talk about communicating with doctors, I talk about how it's kind of this formula. Doctors are data driven and then they sort through it and they try and find a solution. And so when you go and you say I have a headache to a physician, let's say you're not emergent, but you go and you say, oh, I'm having these headaches. It's really not a lot of data to give the doctor. So how how bad did the headaches hurt? How often are you having them? How are they affecting your life? That's much more data that then a doctor can say, OK, let me think about, you know, find a solution or let's try and figure out if you need more testing and things like that. These are part of building the skills of communication that no one's ever taught us. Doctors are trained to sit in offices and diagnose patients. But patients are never trained to sit in front of the doctor to be actively participating in that conversation. And that's what just blows my mind. And I mean, I think the females have it worse. I mean, I'll be honest, I my my work is in female health. And, you know, I just think that they they bear the brunt of this massive gap in communication. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, alongside this idea of understanding pain in women is this idea of our relationship to our doctors that after that incident, I just really be it's been on my mind for a long time. You and I have talked about this so much, but it's one of those coverage areas that I think I really need to I'm really compelled to look into because, you know, I suppose on the other side as well, doctors here in North America at any rate, although I'm sure like anywhere in the world, there's a lot of pressure on on doctors right now in North America as well. Like the health care system is not really working for anybody except the people who are really profiting off it. So doctors and patients are both kind of feeling the pinch of a broken health care system. And I think that, you know, understanding like in order to to reduce this gap in order for doctors and patients to really speak each other's language, I think we both have to extend our understanding to like where the other guy is coming from in a way. And that too has been something that I've been thinking about a lot because again, all driven by this experience of a single and singular headache in the ER that really had no solution. You know, right? Yeah, I think that the gap also is there's a lot of distrust. Whenever you don't feel heard, you start to think, I don't really know if I trust this person or even more. I don't know if I trust this relationship because to me, a doctor is like one of the closest relationships you could have. I mean, people are very selective of who they allow in their inner circle, but then they go online and they take advice from a health influencer. And it's like, but wait a minute, the person you take medical advice from, you should know and trust. But like you said, both ends need to meet in the middle. The medical system needs to come more towards the middle, but so do the patients in taking the responsibility that they have to participate as well. Yeah. And I do this for myself quite a lot, I think, and I'm a caregiver as well for my mom and I certainly advocate, probably advocate better for her than I do for myself. But you know, what you're talking about this trust, I think that becomes very acute in an emergency room, right? Because you're there because you're frightened. You think something has gone very wrong and 100 percent, you're placing yourself in the hands of whoever is treating you. And I do think that my health care provider in this story, who was a nurse practitioner, I never saw an attending in my time at the ER, which apparently is, I think, not unusual. She was doing her best. Spencer, she was doing her best. I'll give her that. And it was just nowhere near, never mind, good enough. It was nowhere near enough.And again, you know, this is a public hospital and I understand all that. And it's really interesting, right, how selfish we become when our personal health or something so close to us is threatened. I was like, yeah, I don't care who's ahead of me. I don't care what all these other people have got. Somebody needs to fix me right now. Right. It was the best they could do for me after I explained to the nurse practitioner what's going on. And they did send me for a CT scan. And, you know, just the act of going somewhere and doing something like a CT scan, you think, OK, it's going to be fine because somebody is paying attention and they're going to look inside my brain. And, you know, and the act of like looking inside my brain was was like, OK, you have no aneurysm, you have no brain bleed again. You're not going to die imminently because this is what this is the fuel, the grease that keeps the wheels turning in the ER. Or maybe I've just been watching the pit too long. I don't know. But I've been saying, are you watching the pit? I love it. I'm obsessed, totally obsessed. And so I think I think, you know, I was there and I was like, OK, the CT scan is done. But there was a moment when and I was just still in the waiting room. There's there's no there's like people lying on beds and hallways. There's people everywhere. There's not enough space to sit in the waiting room. People standing. And there were in fact there were the site that really gave me pause was I had forgotten that Elmhurst is also the hospital where they bring prisoners from Rikers, which is this infamous jail in town. So no, it's a law and order. Yeah. Oh, yes. And so every hour or so you'd see a prisoner with shackles on their feet and a cop on either side being taken from one place to the other or being wheeled in a bed from one place to the other. And you're you know, at that point I was just like, OK, OK, OK, OK. Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. And because it just it just adds to the anxiety level, I think. I remember this one moment where this nurse came up to me and she I have I got a seat. I was sitting down. She plopped a bag of saline on the table next to me and she said, OK, we're going to give you this stuff. And I was like, OK, what are you giving me? She's like, OK, we're going to give you fluids and then we're going to give you this some other thing with a complicated name. And I was like, what's the other thing? And she just looked at me like, really, you're going to do this. You're going to make me talk to you. She's so grumpy. 100 percent respect nurses is the thing I want to preface this with. And I'm sure she had her hands full and she did not want me to be asking her questions about this other thing she was going to give me. And I said, what is it and what's it for? And so she gave me a filthy look and then she said she looked it up and she said, it's for migraines. And I was like, I don't have a migraine, though. Right. Like they hadn't told me a name for what I had. But I don't have a migraine. And I said, and she said, it'll take care of your digestive problems that come with the migraine. And I was like, I have zero, zero digestive issues and I don't have a migraine. Nobody's told me this is a migraine. OK, so there's a there's a difference between a headache and a migraine. And that difference is huge. And I know that because I did a couple of episodes on migraines and I have a couple of friends of mine who have been chronic migraine sufferers. And I know that what I had was not a migraine. And in the middle of issues, like about to put the IV in and then somebody called her and she was like, I'll be right back. So then I'm sitting there with my arm out kind of waiting for her. I was like, OK. And in that time, Spencer, I looked it up on Google, whatever the. I'm with this migraine medication was. I have this long list of side effects as well when you take it. And now I know every drug comes with side effects. And I was like, oh, I'm definitely not taking this. And I think, you know, for if you think about like how mad I was with myself for not advocating for myself enough and be hesitant to say a number that describe my pain, this is where I probably overcompensated for it. Where when the nurse came back, I was like, I want to speak to a physician about why I should take this drug or I'm not taking this drug because I don't have a migraine. And she really got very angry with me because she just wanted to come and administer the medication and go away and do her next crisis or whatever. And so she very grumpily hooked me up with the fluids. And then I thought, why did I piss off the person that's going to put a needle in my arm? Maybe I should have waited till after. But anyway, so she put it and she put it in and she said, I'm going to check with the physician. She never came back. She didn't check for the physician and I didn't take the migraine medication. And I was just sitting there with my arm in in the IV and my hood over my head and just thinking, like, there's so much here. There's so much here to go into. There's so much. There's so much. You know, I have to say, Rava Free for asking what medicine they were going to give you because I had a similar experience where I ended up in the emergency room because I do have chronic migraine. I've had them for 20-ish years, a little bit more. And I went about a year without having them. And so I kind of thought, like, well, they're gone. I'm like, that's just not how migraine works. Migraine is a continuing thing and you really have to stay on top of it. So the neurologists here in Barcelona, at least, it takes like six or seven months to get into see a neurologist. So I was kind of getting these headaches and then one day I had a really bad headache. I didn't have my rescue medicine. I was all out and I had to go to the ER. And so I didn't ask what medicine they were going to give me. I just kind of assumed it was going to be a similar protocol. So they hooked me to the IV. They hooked me to the IV. They gave me this medicine and they just hang it on the pole. And there's a medicine here in Europe called Nolotu. It's the number one pain medicine given in Spain, but it's banned in like 40 countries because there are some rare but life-threatening side effects of this medication. And they found that Spanish genetics don't ever get this. If you're from Spain and you're given this pain medicine, it's no big deal. But if you're from the UK, if you're from other places, a lot of UK people who come visit Spain for vacation, they've had some complications from being given this medicine. And my heritage is German and British. And so they hooked me up. I'm laying. And I turned to look and I see the bag and it says Nolotu. And the nurse comes in, he's about to hook it up, and I said, "I'm not taking that medication." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because I'm concerned I will have a side effect." He said, "Well, have you ever had it?" I said, "No, but I don't want to take it." And I'm trying to explain to them in Spanish about why I don't want to take it. And the nurse is just so annoyed because it's right. He has his orders. He's come. He's supposed to give me the medicine. Then that's it. And so that was going to be the last medicine they were going to give me. The nurse didn't come back. The next person I saw, which was about 30 minutes later, was the doctor with my discharge papers. And he came in and said, "We're done. Here's your discharge. We're going to get you an appointment with the neurologist. You'll get bumped up the list. You'll probably see him in a month. And here's a prescription for some rescue medicine that you've taken before. Bye." That's insane. That was it. Yes. But look, yes, you kind of become that whiny woman in a way. The flags go up for the doctors of, "Oh, this could be a difficult patient." But this is part of advocating. This is part of the skills of saying, "I don't care how I'm going to look. This is my body. And I'm going to do and say whatever I can to protect it." These people aren't asking me my whole medical history to know if I might have an allergy or something. They're not going that deep. So I have to do it for myself. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And when I looked at that sea of people in the waiting room, I thought, "To this nurse, I'm just one of these people."

In the time that she went away and came back again, I really had to make a decision of, "Am I going to dig my heels in and be a bit difficult about this?" Or, "Am I going to be like, "Okay, fine. I'll take it." Even though I don't know what it is, I've just looked up and I've seen these side effects. And even though I don't have the thing that it's treating, I think it is an intentional decision that you have to make that if you're going to be seen as a winding woman, if you're going to be seen as a difficult patient, that's okay. It's okay. Or bring me someone who will engage with me. I get it. My life is hard to love healthcare workers and everything they do, especially at that hospital where they're all kind of burnt to a crisp. So many healthcare workers are just fried. I made a decision in that moment of, "Yeah, I'm going to be difficult." And I was kind of punished for that in her walking way. And I think I'm always trying to also be thinking about these people have a hard job, don't make anything worse. But there has to be a balance, I think, between doing that, which personally, I do for everyone. I'm always like, "This person's life is hard and I shouldn't make it harder." And the older I get, Spencer, the more I'm like, "Your life is hard. Here's your number. Take it and get in line. I'm so high." It's not very compassionate. And I do try to be a compassionate person. But when it comes to your health, I feel like sometimes you're put in a situation where the strongest form of advocacy is just to be kind of a pain in the ass to someone else. Yes. And that's okay. Maybe that's okay. It is okay. And women are ingrained to not be pain in the asses. They are ingrained to sit and be agreeable. And so this is going against a lot of things that we have been taught for centuries. You're not supposed to stand up and say, "No." And I think that's probably one of the hardest things that I've found in my research of advocacy is a woman having that agency to say, "No, I'm not doing this." "No, I don't agree." Or, "I want a second opinion." All these things are just so uncomfortable, to be honest. But now more than ever, they're just necessary. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. you know, we've covered so much. I want to talk about your diagnosis because at the time when I talked to you, I did this episode, you had said to me, "I didn't leave with the diagnosis." You know, I kind of left open-ended. And I remember saying back, "Perfect." Because healthcare, a lot of times, you don't get answers quickly. And you have to sit and you have to see specialists and you have to go through it to find something. And so, you know, there's two questions here that I have. One was, the ER told you, like, "We're not here to diagnose you." You say that in your interview, in your podcast. And so the onus is on you then as a patient to follow up. It's because this was very scary. But perhaps if it's not something so scary and the emergency room says, like, "Oh, you're good to go. You should talk to a doctor." Maybe that patient isn't going to follow up. I mean, that's another part of advocacy is kind of pushing yourself to continue. It's like you said at the beginning, like, "I don't have time to go to the ER." A lot of women don't have time to go to the ER. So I'm kind of curious how you felt about being told you didn't have diagnosis and then also the onus being on you to see those doctors and follow up. And you did say recently that you now do have a diagnosis. So I'm kind of curious to see how this circle somewhat closes, although it was not closing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not a neat sort of tied up with a bow ending either. So when I left the ER, I said to the health care provider, like, "What is the name for what I have?" Because that's like I'm just a little CD about these things. I'm like, "Give a name and you can put it in a filing system somewhere." You know, like once you know what it's called, you can deal with it. And she said, "Oh, no, we don't do that. We don't diagnose." And which was new to me. I didn't know that that was the thing. But you know who does have a name for what I have? The Internet. The Internet has a name for what I have. And in that time, the four or five hours that I was sitting there with the IV in my arm and two Tylenol, I should say, that's what I was given. That was a treatment. I was on Google almost the entire time. And Google told me, "Well, it could be a thunderclap headache, which sounds really scary." And in fact, a very good friend of mine had a thunderclap headache. And that was what led her to go to the emergency room. And there they found that she had a brain aneurysm. And she, by some miracle, you know, she survived it and it has changed her life. So when I saw that on my phone, I was like, "Oh, my God." But Google also told me that I could have something called an ice pick headache. And which is a completely different thing, which sounds no less terrifying. And I was like, so there I was like, "Oh, my God, I've got a thunderclap headache." "Oh, no, I've got an ice pick headache." And then I thought like, "This is a joke. What am I doing taking medical advice from Google in an emergency room?" "Well, what is going on here? What is actually happening?" And it was very confusing. And that sort of intellectual confusing plus physical pain, you know, it was difficult to keep the fear at bay. It was like on every single level, it was like big emotions, big things going on physically, mentally, emotionally, and deeply, deeply stressful. So when that healthcare provider said, "We don't give a name for what you've got. We don't diagnose." That was like kind of the last straw. And I thought, "Oh, yeah, God, eight hours in and I don't even have a name for this thing." All they can tell me is, "I'm not going to die today. Hooray. That's great. I'm deeply grateful for that." But between that and the rest of my life, like what should happen next? So I went away and they told me to follow up with a neurologist, just like what you said, takes months to see a neurologist in New York City. And I tried a little hack that I was quite pleased with, which is I called them up and instead of looking for an individual neurologist, I just said, "The next neurologist that you have, can you put me on the waiting list?" I don't care who it is, just if you have an opening or cancellation or something. And that brought it from six months waiting to eventually, I think I saw a neurologist within two and a half months from that date. So, you know, so look at this. On the one hand, you're in the ER, you think, "I have a brain aneurysm. Something is very wrong with my head." And then you're going to wait two and a half, three months, four months, five months, six months to see a neurologist. There's nothing in between. There's nothing in between. And so I did see a neurologist. She did say it was a thunderclap headache And I looked at my imaging results and ran them through AI. And AI was like, "We think it's kind of okay, but you should follow up with a doctor." So at least AI is being a little bit more responsible. And my next follow up with the neurologist is in six weeks time. So that's what I mean. And now I'm taking very, very, very good care of myself because my life has not become any less stressful. I'm not eating any less salt or junk. Well, I am. I am eating... Because I think December I was very burnt out as well. And just eating a lot of junk and watching a lot of Korean dramas on TV and drinking a lot of Prosecco and all of that stuff was going on in December. So maybe, maybe it's unsurprising that I got this kind of headache, but that's just me guessing. That's just me guessing, you know?

And I think the neurologist is very good. She listened. She has some thoughts

She obviously said, "We're going to keep an eye on you." She sent me for an MRI.

And I'd be curious to see what she thinks of that brain scan. But now I'm doing a lot better at trying to sleep, trying to eat well, definitely getting more exercise because I'm scared that it'll happen again. And I don't know what that means. So that's what I mean to say. Like, this story is kind of over, but it's not been a satisfying conclusion. It's not tied up with a bowl at the end.

Yeah, I think that's very common in the animal health. But I think that you got a name for it. I think there are a lot of women that never get names for things. It's just a lot of "I don't know" or "We don't have a name for this" or "They send you to somebody else." So, like, "I can't help you anymore." So it's not saying anything's better or worse. It's just, like, I think that in female health care, there's an acceptance of,

"Well, we just don't know what to call it," or "We're not sure. We don't know why it happened." You know? It's accepted for that. I think about how you were talking about Googling in the emergency room and also about looking on AI after your scan.

You know, we talked about trust between patients and doctors. And, you know, in a way, I think that the internet has widened that gap. Because here you are in an emergency room surrounded by doctors and nurses, and they are supposed to help you. And you are going to Google to say, "Well, what is going on? What has happened to me?" And so, you know, was that...and I also think you're in a situation where you're afraid and fear amplifies everything, you know? So then this fear of this distrust of, "But are they really doing what's best for me? Do they really know?" I also think AI has saved a lot of lives of a lot of people who maybe wouldn't have gone to the ER. Maybe they had a really bad headache, and they said to AI, "Do I need to go to the emergency room?" And it says, "Yes, go." And then, you know, they survive. It's interesting to me. I see positive negatives to it.

In America in particular, this conversation about not just trust in medicine and doctors, but trust in science is like this big and depressing topic, right? Because I do trust science. And I trust science for the same reason some people don't trust science, which is the uncertainty at the heart of science, right?

And I...a scientist who is like sure about something, who's 100% sure, is not a scientist to be trusted, frankly. And I, you know, maybe that's what people look to medicine for, look to science for. For me, that gives me a lot of hope, right? That gives...like, it is...yes, it is 100% depressing that women's health is under-researched, underfunded, under-paid attention to. But on the other hand, look at the scope there, look at the potential. Now that we're all like, we are paying attention. We are looking at this. We get the how much that can be discovered. It should really excite scientists and medicine broadly. But I want to say one thing about AI, and that is that when I put my brain scan results through AI, I put it through Claude, which I use... I love Claude. A person, I love Claude too. Claude loves me.

A scientist is great. Claude loves...and so now he has this, so to speak.

I love it.

And this was not just like...so I didn't just...this was not like a random question without context. This was a thread on Claude that Claude has been...I've been already telling Claude a bunch of things about me. Right. And already training Claude to only give me evidence-backed research.

To your point earlier of like, why are you taking medical advice from some rando influencer on the internet, right? Yeah.

I saw this great post by a doctor on Instagram who was like, do not take medical advice from a rando with a ring light and a discount code. Yeah. So great. But this...so this...Claude has already like done a bit of work on understanding my own medical situation. And I think that's the thing. It's like going to a human doctor is not like going to a Google search because Google doesn't know who you are medically, right? And a human doctor in theory has to ask you a bunch of questions that allows her to understand who you are medically, what your medical history is, what your propensity is towards this, that, the other. And like I will, for example, with some doctors where it's relevant, I will say like, you need to know that I have like a gene mutation, for example, right? I know that about myself. You need to know that about me. That will give you a medical picture of who I am. And kudos to the neurologist that I took. And this is an advocacy piece that I do now is that I write down five questions on my phone.

And at the start of the conversation, I would say, "Great to meet you, doctor. If you don't mind, at the end of our conversation, can I ask you a couple of questions?"

I don't know if they kind of secretly roll their eyes at that point or they're like, "Okay, yeah, let's go." You know? But I always do that. And I ask those questions. And, you know, nine times out of ten, they're like so happy to engage with you because they're, you know, they see that you're curious. They see that you, if you don't, you know, it's not that I want answers, but I would love an explanation. I would love to know more, you know, that kind of thing. So that is a thing that I always do.

In one of my earlier episodes of the second season, I talk about the one-page health summary and how it changes every appointment, at least for me it has. And basically, it's a piece of paper that you print off, and you can get the download from my website, but it gives your recent medications,

any sort of allergies, any sort of pertinent information, diagnoses, and questions. And also, things that have changed because when you go into these appointments, and now we're kind of outside of the ER, we're talking about appointments, when you go into these, there's pressure, there's a time limit, the clock is ticking, you're stressed. I mean, I can't tell before I started doing this sheet of paper, I would go into appointments with like 10 questions in my mind, or like 10 things I needed to talk about, 10 symptoms I needed to tell, and the doctor would say, "How are you?" And I would be miserable and terrible, and I would say, "Oh, I'm good, thanks." And they were like, "I'm not good. No, I'm not." But that was just my automatic response. And when you can prepare, and you can put down the truth of how you really are, it really does make advocating for yourself so much easier. It takes off that pressure. And I have found 10 times out of 10, doctors love a prepared patient. They love it when you go in there, and they say, "What medication are you taking?" And you just pass them with these papers, and they have all of it written down. And, you know, it's just, this is part of the patient coming to the middle also. We have to meet them there, you know, because otherwise it's just relying on our memory. I say, "Our memory is not a medical record." Like, just write it down. Make everybody's life easier, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's, I think that's such a great idea. I'm not, I'm going to go to your website because I haven't seen that yet. I'll

put the link in the notes. Yeah. I'm sorry, I want to talk about one more thing. Because in your episode, and I love your episode, it's a six-minute episode. It is just, and I have to say, Golda, it's just the most just hypnotic person to listen to. And you also have a newsletter that kind of continues further the conversation from your episode. So you actually had your scan of your brain that you had in your newsletter, which I loved. And you say that you told this story to other women, and that for you it was this extraordinary story of something that had happened to you, but that when you explained it to other women, it was almost like quite ordinary because many other women had had a similar experience. And I love these words, extraordinary to you, kind of ordinary outside in the world. And I'm just kind of curious how you felt about that. Was there kind of this realization of like, wow, this is happening a lot, or wow, this is so under

told? Yeah. I mean, you know, that actually goes to the heart of why I make Overlooked in the first place. Yeah. And well, you, Spencer, you've had migraines. Migraines are no joke. Like migraines are terrible,

objectively terrible. My friend Sally Herships, I did a full thing, full episode with her, her migraines also. And I got her to describe them to me in detail, like the throwing up in the middle of the street and the lying in a completely darkened room because you can't bear any amount of light. The problem is, you know, sometimes I listen to that and think, oh, well, mine wasn't as bad as that. And again, you know, that's kind of taking us back to this pain scale, what's an eight for you versus a nine for me kind of thing. Right. So they're all bad. I'm going to say that they're all bad. And they're all valid. And they're all valid. And they're all valid. And they're all under researched and without solutions, completely medical solutions. So we need to do better as a society with that. But it kind of, you know, it kind of leads me to go back to something that I was thinking about doing when I first started overlooked. And I was doing different conditions. And I thought, should I put a trigger warning at the start of the episode?inst that because everything is triggering. Everything is triggering. It's triggering. And I remember when you're talking about women's health, like you cannot talk about migraines, headaches,

cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, breast cancer. You cannot talk about something like giving birth vaginally or with a C-section. You cannot talk about having a scan, something as simple as having a scan or having a pap smear.

These are episodes on the show.

And the experiences of the people on the show are terrible. They're terrible. They're all terrible. And when we as women talk to each other and say to each other, oh, my God, let me tell you what happened to me,

you know, the person on the other side is often like, yeah, yeah, man, I get it. Even if you know it, you get a specific experience, you understand sort of the horribleness of it. And I think that's the space that is very you know, this from doing a podcast and listening to people like me sort of talk about this stuff. But it's difficult to hear in a way. It's difficult to go through it. And I think that's I think that's where I'm like, it is difficult work, but it's got to be done. It's got to be done somehow. Yeah,

exactly. And I think also when I was reading that, when you're talking about how you found these two other people with these things, I found in doing this work that women really want to tell their stories. They want to be heard, especially if you go to the doctor and you say, oh, gosh, this is what happened to me. I mean, normally, unless you're like, leg got cut off or there's some crazy thing that happened, it's no big thing to a doctor like that. You know, they're trained in all of these different areas of health, like, you know, trying to get empathy from a doctor. It's like, good luck because they see the worst of the worst. So I think that, you know, a lot of times when you talk to another woman about something and it's for me, at least I find like, oh, my mom had that. My sister had that. My friend had that. Like, there's always these like, you know, like the six, you know, the degrees to Kevin Bacon, whatever. Like, it always just goes back to like, they know, even if they didn't experience, they've heard of it. And that connection almost like lightens the load just a little bit. I mean, yes, you hear about it and you think, well, maybe mine wasn't as bad, but it's the same as going into the ER and them saying, how about, you know, how bad is it? Well, I guess it's bad. They're all bad, you know?

And it's to me, it's not so much about comparison, but compassion, like understanding that everybody is going through these things. It kind of goes up to what you said earlier, where it's like, you know, they have a hard life. We all have hard lives. Everybody does, you know, and it doesn't fit on the spectrum. We're all on the spectrum. It's just one dot. And we're all there, you know?

And I think my next, so to what this whole episode kind of led to is to curiosity about two topics in particular. One is this relationship between doctors and patients, which I will do more on in various forms and ask questions and have conversations. And the other is I'm trying to get to the bottom of where the pain scale came from, which I think it just sort of I know this is not the case, but it seems like it kind of magically appeared.

In the in emergency rooms in the early 90s or the 80s. And I'd love to do an episode on like, where did this thing come from? And why is everybody using it despite the fact we know that it's it's imperfect, right? It means that it works to some extent. And if it works or like, what are the alternatives? What are the alternatives to the pain scale, which is sort of quick and tells you in a snapshot what you need to know on either side. But it like it doesn't really work. Let's just you know, it doesn't really look and nobody's disagreeing with that. No,

but we're still using it. We're still using it. I mean, it's standardized, you know, like there has to be it's like you say, pain is pain is subjective. And when you're talking about in the E.R. where everything is even faster and they need data and solutions and in two seconds, you know, the pain, it there needs to be a way to be able to communicate it quickly.

And these pain skills have names and there are a few of them. You know, some people might notice like the smiley faces, you know, they are happy and then they get to end. And then there's, you know, the zero to ten, which has a name I can't remember right now.

say the faces, the faces pain scale was developed by two pediatricians and it's using your children who don't have words. Right. But the expression kind of speak for themselves. But there's something called the McGill pain questionnaire, which is a qualitative questionnaire, which I think probably takes too long or is used in certain circumstances. And then we have the one to ten scale, which is just shorthand. And and I think that's why it's being used. But it's like it has fascinated me. And I'd like to do an episode that's like the origin story of this scale.

yeah. Yeah. That might be a deep hole.

It does make me kind of question and think about how women can express their pain. Like if you went into emergency room and you said my endometriosis pain is worse than my childbirth. Would that give them some idea? You know what I mean? Like is childbirth going to be part of the pain skill for women of like this is as bad as it feels because I think the pain of childbirth is very accepted of like what they're going to give you a, you know, an epidural and all these types of things because this is going to be really painful. So let me

let's work with that Spencer for a second. Right. So I've had I've given birth to children, but not naturally. I've had cesarean sections and that's a different kind of pain. Right. And then I've never had endometriosis. Right. So I wonder if have you ever had. Do you have endometriosis?

I have stage two endometriosis. I do.

So. So yeah. So here you are with Endo and here's me without Endo and here's me having given birth and there's you not having given birth. And we're still going to talk at cross purposes to each other because I'm not going to understand.

You know, I think it's the difference between knowing and understanding. Right. Yeah. It hurts to have that. I know that it hurts to have a baby. I know that. But to make somebody else actually understand pain. Yeah. You know, there's still a bit of crosstalk here. I can imagine what it must be like to have pain from Endo. But I'll tell you what. Let's roll it back even further. Right. Let's look at a 13, 14, 15 year old who has just started period their period. Yeah. And, you know, having to go to a pediatrician or something with a lot of pain because now we're really realizing that like PCO. S. And you'll meet your says these are adolescent onset diseases when I treating it as such was not treating them as adolescent onset diseases. And I think there's this idea. I don't have daughters, but I think there used to be this idea. I think probably it's different now with teenage girls where in my generation as well. You were just told if it hurts when you have a period of cramps, just suck it up.

That's just the way it is. It hurts to be able to have a period. Yes. Yeah. Go lie down like or whatever. Like just like do a thing to put a bandaid on it because this is life. It just hurts. Just move on with it. And that messaging I think is changing. And that's where we'll start to see something different happen in the conversation around pain. I hope because I don't think it's right that when any person is bent over in pain, you should say to them, just suck it up. That's just how it is when you have your period or when you're a woman. Right.

. It's going to be throughout: 2026

Yeah. And one thing I want to mention. I wish you love. One thing I want to mention is that part of what this this series is for me is telling stories about our experiences because, like I said, we need to see the right things. Like I said, we need to see the real life. We need to see advocacy in action. And we also need to understand what other women are going through. You have an amazing workshop that I was a part of and that you're offering to women. And it combines your passion for female health and also your experience in audio and in journalism. And it is called an audio workshop of first person health.

And it was one of the most beautiful experiences that I have done in terms of being able to express how I felt. I mean, Goldie, you have such a beautiful way of teaching and helping somebody kind of pull this stuff inside out.

And so I really if there's women out there listening that really feel like they have stories that they want to tell or perhaps they've never told, but they want to be able to. I can't recommend enough looking into this workshop that you offer.

Thank you so much, Spencer. The workshop that we did together, it was just really,

you know, I take it really seriously that people trust me with their stories and try to hold it as tenderly as I can. Because this is not easy to go to these places and dig into this stuff and, you know, to bring something to life and sound as well. I encourage everybody to like really just sit with that moment of discomfort. And it is very, very uncomfortable, you know, as you've experienced uncomfortable for you, so uncomfortable for me. But I do think it is necessary work to kind of extract that story, the story of your health and have it sit independently of you, like outside of you. And for you for folks to really just own that story in a different way and for that story to speak for itself, right? Told by you in the way that you see it happen. Because going back to this idea of like somebody can know something or somebody can understand, like this is where the understanding piece lives. It has to be really visceral.

And I'm so grateful to you for taking part in it as well. We were all just crying by the end of it. It was just a very important experience for me as well. But yes, it's called First Person Health and it teaches you how to tell your health story and sound.

Yes, yes. And all of this information on Golda and the fabulous work that you do will be in the notes and links and everything to your podcast, to your website. So I mean, there's there's so much information from Golda. And then, you know, I always look at these conversations, I think, oh, maybe it will be about 30 minutes or so. And then they always go over an hour because there's just so much to talk about. I mean, it's just I could do these conversations all day long. But I'm coming down. Spencer is coming down.

There's nothing to die. I was thinking, what can I cut from this? I mean, it's just I don't even need to edit it. It's been such an enjoyable conversation. It has been. It's been so enjoyable. And I just so appreciate your time and just everything that you shared. It's just been wonderful as always

to talk to you. I'm deeply grateful for you having me on, Spencer. Thank you so much. You're so welcome

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