A free self-advocacy toolkit for teen girls
You are not dramatic.
You are not exaggerating.
You are not broken.
Your symptoms are real, and Rachel McGowan built this toolkit to help you prove it. After 4 years, 16 specialists, and too many rooms where she was told it was all in her head, she made the guides she wishes someone had handed her at 12: scripts for doctors, trackers that turn pain into data, and plain-language help for the people in your corner.
Who it's for
3 doors in. Pick yours.
For teens
Words for when a doctor says it's just anxiety, and trackers that turn how you feel into data no one can wave away.
Start hereFor parents
How to back her up in the exam room without speaking over her, and how to get her school on her side.
Support herFor providers and educators
A POTS vs. anxiety reference, a sample 504 plan, and a workshop survey for clinics and schools.
See the referencesWhat's inside
13 PDFs. All free, all yours to keep.
Read them right here, download them to your phone, and print the ones you'll write on.
Doctor communication scripts
8 exact things to say when you're dismissed, rushed, or handed a prescription before a single test.
The glossary
The words that make doctors listen, from diagnostic overshadowing to post-exertional malaise, with a cheat sheet of conditions teen girls get told are stress.
POTS vs. anxiety
A side-by-side chart for the most common misdiagnosis of all, with a script for the clinic and one for the classroom.
Trackers
A daily symptom log, a food sensitivity journal, and a lab results matrix that follows you from doctor to doctor.
The Patient Passport
2 sheets to carry into every appointment: your history on one page, and your questions with room for their answers.
School accommodations
A menu of 504 accommodations, a sample plan, and a letter template a doctor can sign.
Why this exists
The label in the chart hides everything behind it.
Girls and young women wait longer than boys for the same diagnoses. Once a chart says "anxiety," new symptoms tend to get filed under it, a pattern doctors call diagnostic overshadowing. Rachel spent 4 years inside it, proving her body was not making things up, before 16 physical diagnoses finally explained what she had been feeling since she was 12.
The toolkit turns the pattern around. Instead of arguing that pain is real, you hand over the data and the vocabulary that make it undeniable.
My body was screaming, but the medical system is conditioned not to listen to young women.
Rachel wrote about the 4 years between her first symptoms and her 16th diagnosis, and why she turned them into a toolkit.
2 minutes, anonymous
Tell Rachel how it's going.
9 quick ratings, no names or emails. It's how the toolkit gets better.