Ever since I can remember I have wanted to have children. When I was 17 years old I was having some trouble with my monthly cycle or lack thereof. When I saw the doctor he said that it sometimes happens to people, but if it really bothered me he would either burn holes in my ovaries or cut slices of them out. He said that would regulate me for a short while but he didn’t think it would be an issue since I was too young to think about having a family. After a long period of thought (about 3 seconds) and some in depth questions to my doctor about the health of my ovaries (according to him there was no problem with my ovaries) I decided to decline any type of surgery. I opted instead to do what so many other girls with the same problems do; I went on birth control pills. Twelve years later, I was still on birth control and about to be married. I figured let’s get things rolling and see what happens without the pills. So about four months before the wedding, I stopped taking the pills, and wonder of wonders my period never came. I remember going to a new OB/GYN and telling him what had been happening with me on my road to happy family so far. I was in his office bawling my eyes out begging him for a plan of some sort to help me get pregnant. I asked him what I could do to help me get pregnant. Should I lose weight? If so, what should I do to lose it? Should I take some sort of medicine? Is there a pill I can take that will help the burning need to have children subside for just a little while so that I could focus on the things to make that happen. He consoled me and told me that he understood. He then suggested a few different pills specifically for diabetics (I was not diabetic) as those have had a history of helping women to conceive. I tried the pills and found that they were making me feel very off. I couldn’t focus, felt that I was truly out of control of my life and had many days of G.I. upset. My doctor insisted that I just wasn’t really trying and essentially that I was being a big baby. I took them for about two more weeks then decided to stop taking them all together. By this time a year had passed and we still hadn’t conceived I did however manage to have a period at some point in all of this. I went back to the doctor and he seemingly frustrated (what’s he got to be frustrated about?) suggested that I just have a hysterectomy to ease my symptoms. I was only 30 at the time. I finally decided to stop trying to push it and see what I could figure out on my own. “Maybe I should follow through with that diet” I thought.
About six months later a friend of mine lent me a book called The South Beach Diet. As I read through this book I found a section that spoke about a syndrome X or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. The more I read about it the more I thought this is my problem. I started to do some research online and found that it is much more common than I thought. I quickly made an appointment with my OB/GYN and brought a photocopy of the pages with me as well as some printed information from the web. I asked the doctor point blank “is this what I have? Does this sound like what is causing me so many problems?” He looked at me and handed to papers to his nurse and had her look over them, while he excused himself and walked out presumably to work with other patients who must have been in much more need as he couldn’t bother to answer my questions or treat them seriously. His nurse looked them over and said there is a strong possibility that it could be what was causing all the disruptions in my period but she couldn’t be sure as I’d need special testing done by an endocrinologist. I asked for a referral and moved on yet again to someone else’s supposedly capable hands.
At the endocrinologists office he drew blood and had some tests run and proceeded to tell me that I do, in fact, have PCOS. Okay I can deal with a problem that has a name and asked what the next step was. He suggested some of the same medications that were given to me before. When I told him of the prior results he suggested a time release version. We tried it again with poor results and I decided to continue to work on losing weight. I went bike riding and walking and tried to watch my diet. I was getting depressed and desperate. I am typically a stress eater and wanted to eat chocolate, ice cream all kinds of sugary goodness that would get me diagnosed as diabetic quicker than the doctors said.
As it turns out I still was not diabetic, I did manage to lose a few pounds though not much. I felt as though I was falling into a deep dark pit with no way to stop or climb out. I wanted help but couldn’t find it. It seemed that no one knew what I was going through or how to truly console me.
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