Living with PCOS

PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Even though many people don't know what it is, it's actually very common. PCOS is when a woman has a hormonal imbalance. The symptoms can vary from woman to woman, but they include the following: irregular periods, extra production of testosterone, which causes extra unwanted hair and acne, weight gain and difficulty in losing weight, and dark patches of skin on neck or other areas. These are not the only symptoms, but these are some of the most common ones, and not all women who have PCOS have these symptoms.

I wasn't really diagnosed with PCOS until I was in my twenties, so in other words, not too long ago. Now it's nothing new that some doctors need more female anatomy classes, and tend to ignore or simply not know what's wrong with a female when she goes for a checkup. There have been countless stories of how many women have gone to the doctor and either get misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. That was my case. Let's start at the beginning....

The year is 2006, I am 12 years old and days away from moving from CA to NC. I got my first period when I was 10 and in 5th grade, so I knew what cramps felt like and I knew the symptoms for when my period was about to arrive. In 2006 I had just gotten home from school and I was cramping, and bad. I told my mom I didn't feel good. That my abdomen and lower back were hurting. She threw some Advil at me and told me it was just my period letting me know it was coming. I had thought the same thing so I took the pills and went to take a nap. A few hours passed by and the pain was still there. It had actually gotten worse. My sister in law was there and gave me some tea and more pills, but they weren't helping. I was bent over crying from pain begging to go to the doctors. Eventually they took me to the ER. Honestly, I remember very little about my time in the ER. All I remember was having a doctor saying he thought I was faking sick, a nurse arguing saying I looked terrible. They did numerous test everything from giving me a pregnancy test to a CT scan. They couldn't figure out what was wrong, so after several hours they transferred me to the children hospital in San Diego.

I was high on Morphine, which is why I don't remember much, but once I got to the children's hospital they asked if they had done an ultrasound at the ER, and when my mother said no, he ordered one right away. After a while the doctor came back and informed us that I had an ovarian cyst. I was very confused and asked about it, I'll never forget the way he explained. He said " a cyst is like a water balloon. It can be attached to different parts of your body, in your case your ovary, and it's just filled with fluids, like a water balloon." He then proceeded to tell us I didn't need surgery but if I wanted to, he could take it out. My mother said no, and we left the hospital that day. I remember leaving and thinking I was walking around with a water balloon inside me.

Three days after I was released from the hospital we were on a plane to NC. Now even though they told me what was wrong I was still in pain, and they didn't really give me any medication to deal with the problem. It was the beginning of many doctors’ visits, and the beginning of my journey with birth control. We arrived to NC December 18, 2006. I was miserable the entire airplane ride. Knowing what was wrong didn't make it go away and it definitely didn't make the pain go away. I turned 13 in February of 2007. Eventually the pain went away, for the most part, but every now and then it would come back and hit me like a bitch. Being a dramatic teenager, I honestly felt like I was going to die. Let's not forget I had just moved cross country, so not only was I in physical pain, but in emotional and mental pain as well. I started to go to the doctor to get checked up and see of any possible treatment. Now, by 13 I was having irregular periods. I was getting them about every 3-4 months. Sounds fantastic, but it's not. I wasn't getting my periods, but I was definitely feeling the cramps. I always felt the cramps but never the actual period. The summer of 2007 my pain was coming back, and it was time for another doctors’ visit. I was told the treatment they could give me to help reduce they pain and regulate my period was Birth Control.

I have been off and on Birth Control since I was 13. It was, and still is what the doctors say is best for me. It regulates my period and controls my hormones, but the think about it is, Birth Control can mess with a teenager’s emotions. You have so many hormones going about your body, something is bound to go wrong. For me, Birth Control made me feel dizzy, nauseous, have huge headaches, and made me feel depressed. I wanted to do nothing but lay in bed. I hated every single minute of it. Throughout high school I would go on Birth Control for a few months, my period would be normal, and they the side effects would catch up to me and I would stop taking it. When I stopped my periods would come every few months, the pain would come back and it sucked. I didn’t take Birth Control for a few years and it was a miracle when I got my period, and once I did it would last about a week if not more, and be heavy as can be. It was 2012 and my senior year in high school when I started to feel more symptoms of PCOS. I was in the car with my sister when I noticed a chin hair. It was one short but thick hair. I thought nothing much of it and plucked it out. As the years passed, I began to get more and more chin hairs, more irregular periods (a this point I was getting my period once a year), and I started to break out more than I did as a teenager. That was when I went to the doctor again (by this time I was like 22?) I explained everything I was feeling asked about the extra facial hair, and she drew some blood, asked a billion questions and informed me I had PCOS. Which made sense. I asked about treatments and, as you can probably guess, she suggested Birth Control. I told her how I didn’t like I how felt when one them and how I had tried many different types of pills. She suggested one that had a low dosage of hormones and put me on it for a few months. I felt okay but they only regulated my period. I still had a ton of extra facial hair, I still broke out, and I still suffered a lot of pain.

A few years pass and here we are today. I stopped taking the pills last year and I am back to irregular periods. The one thing I think affects me more now is know it is extremely difficult to conceive a child. Mind you, I am not ready for one now, because as you know I’m still a child myself, but I do wonder about the future. I scare myself thinking I’ll never be able to conceive because of this. There’s no cure, and some of the results of it suck. I thought I’d never find someone that loved me, chin hairs and all, and my husband even enjoys plucking them with me. It was difficult to love myself. I felt ugly with the dark skin patches, the chin hair, and the acne, but I learned they were part of me and I had to take care of myself and love myself. Once I did, I found a man that loves me as much as I love me.

PCOS sucks, but I stopped letting it define me and learned to define myself.