PCOS Part I

Dear readers,

I haven't written in a while. I had began preparing the research about aspartame when life got me distracted and I lost the momentum for writing but here I am back again.

As the title might suggest I'll be discussing PCOS. Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. This is what I recently got diagnosed with. Due to many reasons over the years it didn't get caught earlier. 

Here are some of those times, I should've noticed, but somehow things got misdiagnosed, ignored, disregarded, etc. 

I remember back in 2002 going to a doctor concerned about a late period, and hid it from my mom. She was dealing with her own issues and I didn't want her to worry needlessly. Of course as you read this, you probably thought "you must have thought you were pregnant" on the contrary, I wasn't sexually active and knew that this might mean I had another hidden issue. But some how my mom did find out about my doctor visit and like yourself, her thoughts jumped to the same conclusion as you. So despite the fact that ‎she should be supporting me and helping me, I wound up feeling ashamed somehow of my body. The doctor at clinic, shrugged it off as "stress" causing a delay in my period. And so, from then on I assumed my irregular periods were just due to stress. 

My excessive hairiness, that led to being bullied during my childhood, should have been a big red flag, specially since‎ both my parents aren't very hairy. However, it got explained away by me being middle eastern and "resolved" by my parents paying for laser hair removal during my high-school years. 

I also experienced weight gain, and I wasn't a fan of physical activity but for a teenager, I still wasn't the weight I should be. This got ‎"resolved" in my university years, and I assumed that it was a combination of lack of eating and being more active (as in walking to and from university) among other things. 

My hair loss only became noticeable during my recent years and I had assumed that it was due to my nutrients going to my baby through pregnancy and breastfeeding.

So many red flags, none of them leading to the proper diagnosis until now. 

About a year ago, I noticed my periods were irregular but consistently coming every other month. I thought it was due to the breastfeeding or maybe stress, (and the thought‎ did cross my mind that it might be a problem with one of the ovaries but I didn't care to check it out yet). Then this fall, my period failed to show. After 4 months, I figured it's time to investigate to make sure (this time) that I'm not pregnant. The tests were negative. So unto ultrasounds and bloodworks that began to reveal what had been hidden. I have PCOS and slowly the pieces began to make sense. My irregular periods, my weight gain (and difficulty with trying to lose it), my hairiness, my hair loss. And then it dawned on me that my weight loss in university wasn't (just) my unhealthy diet but rather being on the pill. It had regulated my hormones. Since I'm breastfeeding, I haven't gone back on the pill and I've noticed my weight creeping back. No matter how active I'd get, my weight wasn't budging. And now I knew why. But I had bigger problems to deal with. 

My lack of period. My doctor neglected to tell me the risks associated with this. And if it wasn't for some of the online communities, I wouldn't have found out that I'm at a higher risk of endometrial ‎cancer, due to the lack of shedding of the lining of the uterin wall. 

And that's only the tip of the iceberg of PCOS and all that it means. Tune into my next posts for more information about more side effects, how I've been coping with the diagnosis, what treatments I'm trying, statistics and what we know and don't about PCOS.