'Women Often Just Aren't Heard': Sharon Stone Says Doctors Thought She Was 'Faking' Stroke

Sharon Stone Sharon Stone clearly remembers her near-fatal stroke — and the doctors who dismissed it.In a British Vogue interview published on Friday, the Basic Instinct star recalled the 2001 haemorrhage that left her with a nine-day brain bleed and 1% chance of survival. But Stone said that she was initially misdiagnosed by doctors and nearly sent home untreated.“They missed it with the first angiogram and decided that I was faking it,” Stone told the outlet.The Emmy winner had initially experienced a piercing head pain before “waking up on a gurney” at a Los Angeles hospital, she said. Believing the false-negative angiogram, a doctor decided without her knowledge to perform “exploratory brain surgery” — until she pushed back.“What I learned through that experience is that in a medical setting, women often just aren’t heard,” she said.Research suggests that medical professionals sometimes see women as overly dramatic in descriptions of their symptoms. This apparent gender bias can ha