PCOS: PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome
In retrospect, I was actually a pretty cute kid.
This was me when I was 8 or 9. Just a few years before the first symptom would appear. And almost twenty years before they would be accurately diagnosed. Kinda scary, isn't it?
Puberty is a sensitive stage for everyone. You're either growing too fast, leaving you gangly and awkward earning you the nickname "Lurch," or your face is breaking out in a million zits that make your peers call you "Pizza-Face." There are a ton of reasons not to like school during puberty and adolescence. So why would you need any more reason to hate it? I can't think of anyone who would say they were "beautiful" at that particular stage in their life.
I was twelve when I first got my period. My mom was ecstatic, because she considered this my true passage into womanhood. For me, it just meant I was once again the 'different' one amongst my classmates. I had begun developing breasts as early as fifth grade, and it didn't help that I was slightly chunky to begin with.
When you're a young girl in the first throes of your period, the doctors tell you that it will not be regular the first few times, so it didn't ever occur to me to tell anyone what kept happening with mine. I remember one day I was only one class into the morning, and at the break I dashed into the bathroom to change my pad. I soaked the next one in a half hour. I went through everything I had brought with me that day, and ended up having to borrow several from the school nurse. And of course, the nurse never kept the good kind, with the wings. She had the thick, bunchy kind that felt like you were wearing a diaper, and never stayed in place. I got teased for leaving a blood stain on the seat. It wasn't the last time this would happen either.
I remember lamenting to my mom and dad about how I wished I was thinner, and that I wouldn't be so heavy. I was assured time and time again that I was simply just carrying around some baby fat, and that I would thin out as I grew taller. I didn't overeat, I indulged in the occasional dessert (but what teenager do you know doesn't?) always drank water at meal times, and was pretty active in gym and outside after school. By all accounts, the baby fat should have fallen off of me. I even started aerobics with a girl that lived in the apartment attached to our house, and then I was involved in dance and karate. None of it helped.
In sixth grade, I wore a size 15 pants. I remember this, because I'd forgotten to take the size sticker off the back of the leg, and I was picked on all day for wearing something in the double-digits. By the time I was in high school I had grown to my stand-still height of 5'6 and was squeezing into 16's, but probably should have worn 18. XL shirts were tight on me, but I forced myself into them, sucked in my stomach when I walked, hid my thighs by never wearing shorts. I never expected to be rail thin and a size 3, but I have now begun to learn why it was I couldn't lose the 'baby fat'. When I was 22, I gained close to fifty pounds in a year. I was told by my step-dad's parents that I had gained so much they couldn't recognize me. I cried for a week when they told me that. I started weight-watchers and did well on it at first, losing 10 pounds in the first three weeks, but then I plateaued and we lost our internet connection (I attended WW online) and so never started back up again. By this time my period was completely unreliable, but I chalked that up to having been on the Depo shot, and I went for over a year without a period.
In high school, I had hair. And I mean... I. Had. HAIR. It was down to my waist and thick, straight, and full. It was what attracted my first boyfriend to me, and it worked to my advantage. When I had my senior pictures taken, the photographer would NOT shut up about my hair. I didn't begin to lose it until maybe the year after I graduated. My mom took me to a hairdresser friend of hers as a birthday present to me, and she made comments about how it was beginning to thin at the crown. We brushed it off as a side effect from the birth control pill, which I'd been on since I was sixteen to help regulate those heavy periods I was getting. I kept getting told it would grow back. I was given hints and tips to try and stimulate the growth with special shampoos and oils, I stopped coloring it, I took vitamins. When I got married at the age of 23, I had to fluff my hair with clip-in extensions; it was too thin to style on its own. The growth became slower and slower, the texture became more frizzy than straight, and in 2010 I broke down and started wearing clip-in extensions full time because I was beginning to hate looking at myself in the mirror. I hated the fact that you could see my scalp through my hair, and that you could see how round my head was.
I developed Diabetes when I was 25; hypertension by 27, and my cholesterol has been higher lately, although nothing we have to medicate just yet.
All because of polycystic ovarian syndrome.
What is it? If you want the short answer, it is a hormonal dysfunction in the body that ends up producing all of the above changes in a woman's body, oftentimes leading to infertility, but is practically unrecognizable until all of these symptoms reach their peak. There are more symptoms that I have as well, including dark patches of skin on my elbows, armpits, neck, and knees. Skin tags, massive headaches, depression, excessive tiredness, extra hair growth in unwanted places such as the neck and chin, folliculitis (inflammation of the hair follicles), and a penchant for cysts.
After over five years of me telling my doctor(s) something wasn't right, it took a resident at a dermatology appointment to find all of this out. She saw the symptoms, questioned me, and put me through for bloodwork, and began giving me medication to treat me as if I did have it, just to "see what happened." And guess what; when otherwise all past bloodwork from the previous year "would not confirm or deny" my condition, this time it confirmed it, and she got me in with a specialist.
I am now on the road for recovery and control. I will always have PCOS, and can't cure it completely, but with medication and diet and exercise I can control it, and hopefully control the Diabetes as well, and the doctors are very positive about the possibility of me being able to carry children in the future, when I'm healthier. I am hopeful, and have a more positive outlook on this than I ever have. The medication is helping my hair to come back in, and I can see baby-fine hairs popping through that I'm sure no one else can see, but to me, it brings back that possibility of one day looking again like I did in high school. Looking like I did when I was in my adolescence... when I was "beautiful."
Now who would have thought that was possible?
This was me when I was 8 or 9. Just a few years before the first symptom would appear. And almost twenty years before they would be accurately diagnosed. Kinda scary, isn't it?
Puberty is a sensitive stage for everyone. You're either growing too fast, leaving you gangly and awkward earning you the nickname "Lurch," or your face is breaking out in a million zits that make your peers call you "Pizza-Face." There are a ton of reasons not to like school during puberty and adolescence. So why would you need any more reason to hate it? I can't think of anyone who would say they were "beautiful" at that particular stage in their life.
I was twelve when I first got my period. My mom was ecstatic, because she considered this my true passage into womanhood. For me, it just meant I was once again the 'different' one amongst my classmates. I had begun developing breasts as early as fifth grade, and it didn't help that I was slightly chunky to begin with.
When you're a young girl in the first throes of your period, the doctors tell you that it will not be regular the first few times, so it didn't ever occur to me to tell anyone what kept happening with mine. I remember one day I was only one class into the morning, and at the break I dashed into the bathroom to change my pad. I soaked the next one in a half hour. I went through everything I had brought with me that day, and ended up having to borrow several from the school nurse. And of course, the nurse never kept the good kind, with the wings. She had the thick, bunchy kind that felt like you were wearing a diaper, and never stayed in place. I got teased for leaving a blood stain on the seat. It wasn't the last time this would happen either.
I remember lamenting to my mom and dad about how I wished I was thinner, and that I wouldn't be so heavy. I was assured time and time again that I was simply just carrying around some baby fat, and that I would thin out as I grew taller. I didn't overeat, I indulged in the occasional dessert (but what teenager do you know doesn't?) always drank water at meal times, and was pretty active in gym and outside after school. By all accounts, the baby fat should have fallen off of me. I even started aerobics with a girl that lived in the apartment attached to our house, and then I was involved in dance and karate. None of it helped.
In sixth grade, I wore a size 15 pants. I remember this, because I'd forgotten to take the size sticker off the back of the leg, and I was picked on all day for wearing something in the double-digits. By the time I was in high school I had grown to my stand-still height of 5'6 and was squeezing into 16's, but probably should have worn 18. XL shirts were tight on me, but I forced myself into them, sucked in my stomach when I walked, hid my thighs by never wearing shorts. I never expected to be rail thin and a size 3, but I have now begun to learn why it was I couldn't lose the 'baby fat'. When I was 22, I gained close to fifty pounds in a year. I was told by my step-dad's parents that I had gained so much they couldn't recognize me. I cried for a week when they told me that. I started weight-watchers and did well on it at first, losing 10 pounds in the first three weeks, but then I plateaued and we lost our internet connection (I attended WW online) and so never started back up again. By this time my period was completely unreliable, but I chalked that up to having been on the Depo shot, and I went for over a year without a period.
In high school, I had hair. And I mean... I. Had. HAIR. It was down to my waist and thick, straight, and full. It was what attracted my first boyfriend to me, and it worked to my advantage. When I had my senior pictures taken, the photographer would NOT shut up about my hair. I didn't begin to lose it until maybe the year after I graduated. My mom took me to a hairdresser friend of hers as a birthday present to me, and she made comments about how it was beginning to thin at the crown. We brushed it off as a side effect from the birth control pill, which I'd been on since I was sixteen to help regulate those heavy periods I was getting. I kept getting told it would grow back. I was given hints and tips to try and stimulate the growth with special shampoos and oils, I stopped coloring it, I took vitamins. When I got married at the age of 23, I had to fluff my hair with clip-in extensions; it was too thin to style on its own. The growth became slower and slower, the texture became more frizzy than straight, and in 2010 I broke down and started wearing clip-in extensions full time because I was beginning to hate looking at myself in the mirror. I hated the fact that you could see my scalp through my hair, and that you could see how round my head was.
I developed Diabetes when I was 25; hypertension by 27, and my cholesterol has been higher lately, although nothing we have to medicate just yet.
All because of polycystic ovarian syndrome.
What is it? If you want the short answer, it is a hormonal dysfunction in the body that ends up producing all of the above changes in a woman's body, oftentimes leading to infertility, but is practically unrecognizable until all of these symptoms reach their peak. There are more symptoms that I have as well, including dark patches of skin on my elbows, armpits, neck, and knees. Skin tags, massive headaches, depression, excessive tiredness, extra hair growth in unwanted places such as the neck and chin, folliculitis (inflammation of the hair follicles), and a penchant for cysts.
After over five years of me telling my doctor(s) something wasn't right, it took a resident at a dermatology appointment to find all of this out. She saw the symptoms, questioned me, and put me through for bloodwork, and began giving me medication to treat me as if I did have it, just to "see what happened." And guess what; when otherwise all past bloodwork from the previous year "would not confirm or deny" my condition, this time it confirmed it, and she got me in with a specialist.
I am now on the road for recovery and control. I will always have PCOS, and can't cure it completely, but with medication and diet and exercise I can control it, and hopefully control the Diabetes as well, and the doctors are very positive about the possibility of me being able to carry children in the future, when I'm healthier. I am hopeful, and have a more positive outlook on this than I ever have. The medication is helping my hair to come back in, and I can see baby-fine hairs popping through that I'm sure no one else can see, but to me, it brings back that possibility of one day looking again like I did in high school. Looking like I did when I was in my adolescence... when I was "beautiful."
Now who would have thought that was possible?