Joanne van den Broek (40) from Zwijndrecht suddenly got a strange taste in her mouth in March 2020. Then her arm also started to tingle. Strange, she thought. But before she could worry, the symptoms subsided.
“But soon it happened more often,” says Joanne. “And I also got migraines. Soon it severely limited my functioning. In no time it took over my whole life.”
severe symptoms
Joanne worked in logistics four days a week. Due to the corona crisis and the lockdown, her three daughters (now 11, 10 and 8) were permanently home. “I had to do my job, take care of the children, do the household. The eldest also has a mental disability, she needs extra attention.”
So when the GP said she was suffering from stress, she thought: yes, that could very well be the case. “I recognized myself in that. Women are more often control freaks, aren’t they?”
But at the same time something gnawed. After all, weren’t the symptoms too much for stress? “I had severe headaches. Neck pain too. I saw spots almost continuously. I often vomited. The tingling kept coming and going.”
She went to the doctor again and again. Because of changes in practice, that was always someone else. “They all said the same thing: stress. I got pills for the migraines. I took them incessantly, but they didn’t help.”
Something had to be done, so Joanne decided to deal with the stress after all. She quit her job for four days and started another job. “Five half days. So for half a salary.”
Dragged down the stairs
She didn’t get started at that job. It just wouldn’t. She didn’t function as she used to. In the second week at that new company, she walked down the stairs. “My left leg suddenly stopped working. But I still dragged myself down the stairs. The ladies at the reception saw me fumbling down those stairs. And I drove home – life-threatening afterwards – by car.”
The next day, Joanne, who was still on probation, was fired. “They said I turned out to be a very different person than they thought after they got to know me during the interview.”
She was crying at the doctor’s office. Again that diagnosis: “You have a burnout.” She begged for a neurologist referral. “Finally I got it.”
It was now mid-November – about eight months after the first complaints, and about six months after she first went to the doctor – when she had a CT scan at the Albert Schweitzer hospital in Dordrecht. “Just at that moment I had a big seizure, an attack,” she says emotionally. “I was saved because of that. I passed out and when I came to, I was in a completely different hospital.”
That was the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. Doctors had made a hole in the skull to relieve pressure on her brain. That was necessary because Joanne turned out to have a brain tumor. There was also a cyst, with fluid accumulating. In the meantime, she has received 28 radiation treatments, chemotherapy, and surgery. “They can’t take everything away. So it’s a matter of keeping it under control.”
Misery saved
Joanne, she says, does not want to be angry with the GPs. “They have apologized, they admitted that they should have taken it more seriously. But, yes, it does bother me. They could not have prevented the brain tumor, but if my complaints had been taken seriously straight away, it would have been a lot to me. been spared misery.”
Perhaps, says Joanne, the tumor would have been a little smaller. “And I certainly would not have started a new job with all the uncertainty that entails. Because now I received 70 percent of that lower, half income from the UWV. And also: I started to doubt myself more and more during that period. Because when the doctor says it, you want to believe it.
She doesn’t think too much about the prospects. She is often sad, though. “Who wouldn’t it be? I’m in the summer of my life, but it’s not really summer. I’m often tired. Emotionally tired, too. Getting help isn’t easy. You have to be very involved. also energy. But I’m still here.”
Stichting Voices for Women
The reason for this interview was our article about the petition by Mirjam Kaijer of the Voices for Women Foundation. In it, she argues for gender-specific care and for more research into unexplained health problems in women. Women are less likely to be referred to a specialist than men, according to the complaint. “We are still too quickly given labels such as stress, burnout, tension, fears and depression,” says Kaijer.
The petition was handed over to Minister Ernst Kuipers (Public Health, Welfare and Sport) last week.