[PCOS] My PCOS Story

I have been aware of my PCOS diagosis for about fifteen years now.


As a teen, I had very painful and sporadic menstraul cycles. I literally could not function when on my period... the pain, even with pain killers, was too much and I often had to go home from school. My mother told me they were simply menarche cramps, and not too worry too much. To reassure me, she had me looked at by my family doctor at the time.

When I stopped by for my results, my family doctor looked very grim. I was there alone, so family could do errands while my doctor presumably told me everything was okay. He was awkward, but plunged ahead.

"You may have adrenal cancer. Your hormones are all at abnormal levels, and you have growths on your ultrasound. We need to send you this week for a CAT scan of your abdominal area."

That wasn't a happy day for me. Turned out that the growths on my adrenal gland were actually really large cysts forming on my ovary; so hearing that I had PCOS was a positive thing for me, as it's alternate was cancer. He talked a lot about what PCOS was, but frankly as a teen I was just so relieved to not have cancer I blanked alot of it out.

My doctor told me I had to go on birth control pills, and that was that.... I didn't hear about anything and it didn't affect my life until I decided to go off the birth control pills after my long term relationship in my late twenties fizzled out. I had almost forgotten about the PCOS, and was trying to "naturalize my system" like some magazine health articles recommended.

Its naturalized state was not something I appreciated. I started gaining weight, and a lot of it. We're talking forty pounds in just a few months; I went from a size 10 to a size 20 jean size, and my diet didn't reflect that kind of calorie intake. I started getting hair growth where hair simply shouldn't be growing on a lady; I frantically plucked/shaved/waxed to keep up. I started getting tired a lot more easily; I blamed that on the weight gain. I stopped ovulating, and got a bit depressed. This led me to going back to the doctor in 2011, to tearfully ask what was going on.

The first doctor I saw was at a walk-in clinic at the school I was attending. She poo-poo'd the idea that there was anything wrong, told me I was just too stressed, and sent me on my way. I went back, as the weight gain was continuing. She got stern with me, and told me to "Stop eating so poorly"; she offered a progesterone trigger shot to jump start my period, which I declined, and gave me a food pyramid chart on my way out. I was livid. At that time, I had put myself on a Very Low Calorie Diet to attempt to stymie the weight gain, and was running three times a week, and it still wasn't working. I don't think she believed me about what I was eating/doing, and I was discouraged.

I got a second opinion a few months later. My new doctor immediately asked me if I had heard of PCOS, and I remembered that conversation from more than a decade before. She did some confirmatory hormone tests and an ultrasound, and confirmed that my PCOS was in full form. I was immediately put back on hormonal birth controls to even out my androgens, and given a referral to an Women's Health specialist, who subsequently put me on Metformin(Glucophage)/told me to eat normally again. I immediately lost twenty pounds. Happy me.

Now, a few years later, I'm researching having a baby with PCOS. Turns out that women with PCOS have a higher rate of miscarriage, a harder time getting pregnant, a higher rate of gestational diabetes, and a higher incidence of preterm birth with multiples. Yikes! I felt really discouraged, until my doctor told me:

"The question with PCOS isn't "Can we get you pregnant?It is,  "How will we get you pregnant?"

It's just one more bump on the road of becoming a family. I can do this.