17/365 - My story with PCOS

Christmas 2009

It was the year when Harrods’s Christmas theme was The 70th Anniversary of the movie “The Wizard of Oz” and the extravaganza was limitless, at least in my eyes. Some of the displays were just breathtaking!

In the evenings I would come back to our cute, little Christmas tree that we had put on a table top, there has to be one, always.

We had a family member visiting and to see him so happy and impressed with London was heartwarming! He was so young back then, actually we were all baby faces!

We still did not have a work permit documentation from the Border Agency, the communication was paused for a long time during winter holidays and it would be four more months until the final response.

Now you might think I am oversharing, but if you judge or cringe, you do not have to read the next part, it is not a problem for me. Being ashamed or embarrassed of sharing details about your body or health should be a thing of the past. Obviously, you might not want to do that out of the blue and randomly, like when you are ordering take away or paying for your shopping at the till, but it should feel ok to talk with friends, family and other people that you are comfortable with.

I can offer very limited advice, but I will always encourage open, honest talk. Some things are hard to carry around and I hope you have someone to talk to.

It was around that time (late 2009) that I started experiencing more than normal hormonal problems and ended being diagnosed with PCOS a few months later. Changing countries and foods cumulated with the stress probably made things worse. I had always had problems, since early teenage years, but not like that.

The doctors had no idea then what causes it and they mostly did one thing - put you on the pill, most of them still do. But you see, the pill made me very depressed so, I stopped taking it. After stopping, in a few months things would get back to normal, except my periods. I was referred to a specialist and when I told him that I had to take a break from them he said to me: “Do you think you know better?”.

So, I ended up taking them for another two years until I was utterly miserable. When I decided that this is a do or die situation I was almost 26. More on this later…

Caroline Criado Perez’s groundbreaking book called “Invisible women” about women’s healthcare, medical research and rights was a big aha moment for me. Another eye opening book that I cannot stop raving about is Bill Bryson’s “The Body” where he points out all the things that are still a great mystery in medicine! There are other books too, but these two have had a mojor impact on me.

Between pubmed, the books, the podcasts, the videos, my experience with doctors, hundreds of chats with other female friends and my science degree - whenever anyone will come and tell me that something is definitely good for me without true consideration for side effects, that person is not a professional with my best interest at heart and I will look for a another opinion. I believe a real scientist will always be reluctant to guarantee or to push someone into taking a particular decision.

But before everything I will look from a specialist for empathy, respect and that humility that shows that we are still learning.

Once someone called me “opinionated” and he would probably have never said that to a man, I took that as a compliment because I understand now that if you are brave enough to speak up, be ready to make some people very uncomfortable.

You got this!