Getting a PCOS Diagnosis

Let's face it - PCOS sucks. It sounds like a death sentence for a woman. I'm mean, let's be honest, women have a lot of self identity issues. We already have the whole, I'm not thin enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not wanted enough etc set of issues. However, one thing that we normally go through life believing, is that no matter what - I can reproduce. That makes me different from men. It's my one gift that no one can take away from me - right? Well.... there's also the pesky problem of finding a suitable DNA donor to make sure you spawn high-quality children, but in a nutshell - you're good - you can have kids. Now the catch to this is how do you know you really are fertile until you start trying? I mean I never had a normal cycle. And I had a whole string of (now I realize) crappy OBGYNs who made false promises of how birth control pills will regulate me. They all claimed that when I came off of the birth control pills, I'd be fertile and ready to have kids.

Boy were they totally off base there. I won't go into it today, but I did get pregnant on my own once, and that ended up in a miscarriage. This story starts a year after miscarrying and being ready to try and get pregnant. Funny thing, how when you want to get pregnant, you can't.... but when you're not trying - it just happens. Well when I wasn't trying - I got pregnant. When I began to try - I came to realize just how defective my reproductive system was!

So I came off of my birth control pills. About 90 days passed and not a maxi pad in sight! I went back to my obgyn, and they gave me provera to start my period, and said come back in 90 days if you don't have a period. Well another 90 days passed and still no period. Please note - I'm now 6 months into Trying to Conceive! My OBGYN didn't think anything strange of this. He simply said, let's do some rounds of a drug called clomid to see if that makes you ovulate. Each clomid cycle takes roughly 30 days + the time it takes for your period. You also need to use provera to cause a period before you start your clomid. So you can assume a clomid cycle is close to 60 days. Well 3 rounds of clomid ( increasing doses of 50, 10, and 150 mg) and NOTHING. I charted and I monitoring my temps and blew through a ton of ovulation predictor kits. NOTHING! Although I should say my last cycle gave me an ovulation positive that lasted 2 weeks straight. We're counting that as a negative. My poor husband was subjected to the emotionless sex of baby making as I demanded his seed as my cycle dictated. What a total waste. By the way - baby making sex can completely destroy any passion in a relationship!

So 3 rounds of clomid later - I'm still feeling barren as ever. I'm now roughly a year into my Trying to Conceive. Well... my OBGYN gave up. He said I probably need to speak to an endocrinologist. So I scheduled an appointment and went off to my first specialist. That was quite the experience. She looked at me, looked at the 6 hairs I have under my chin (yes just 6) and looked at my waist line and said - yep you have PCOS. I'm going to prescribe metformin for you and you schedule an appointment with me in 3 months.  It was not a terribly informative doctor's appointment. So I got in my car, drove home, started to cry a little as I felt bewildered and didn't understand what this PCOS disease was I had. I went to the pharmacy, picked up my prescription, and drove home.

My dear sweet husband decided to take me out to dinner to make me feel better about everything. I figured that would be a good time to take my first pill, since it needed to be taken with meals. We went to an italian restaurant - CRITICAL MISTAKE #1. I had a pasta dish - CRITICAL MISTAKE #2. I also split a dessert with my husband - CRITICAL MISTAKE #3. At the end of the meal, I popped my metformin pill - CRITICAL MISTAKE #4 -  and we drove home. About half way home I heard a gurgle in my stomach. I told my dear husband that I thought maybe dinner didn't agree with me. By the time we got home, my stomach sounded like one of those water coolers you see in offices. I went to the bathroom - and experienced what can only be described as explosive diarrhea. It also lasted until 4 in the morning. I literally thought I was going to die or maybe crap out part of my large intestine. I've never had a stomach run so bad. It felt like my system was ejecting everything I had ever eaten. I told my husband that if my stomach did not stop by morning, we'd have to call an ambulance. It was so bad, I couldn't risk sitting in a car with my stomach running the way it was.

Around 4 am it subsided, and I was feeling brave enough to get into bed. I called my doctor in the morning, no answer. I called 3 times a day for the next few days - but no one called me back. I decided at that moment that I needed to get educated about my condition and my medication and I needed to get educated FAST! I went online and googled metformin and PCOS and landed on Soul Cysters. For those of you in the PCOS community - you know it's the largest PCOS support forum out there. I started to read about metformin (and its side effects) as well as PCOS. The more I read, the more I realized I needed to speak to a fertility specialist. So began my road towards dealing with my PCOS....