Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome - Tumblr Posts
Guess who just found out that they have PCOS. 💃🕺💃🕺
I'm scared.
A few days ago, I was found to have a teratoma--a somewhat rare and disgusting, but most likely benign, kind of cyst/tumor--on my right ovary. Then, today, I was diagnosed with PCOS due to my elevated DHEA-sulfate levels.
Is it good that I discovered all this so I can have it treated? Yes, of course! But I'm feeling nervous and honestly kind of hopeless about what lies ahead.
PCOS is correlated with higher risks of all sorts of wonderful things: insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, endometrial cancer, anxiety, depression... All that good stuff. So now I'm freaking out about how my upcoming glucose tolerance test will go, but more importantly, how I'm going to live the rest of my life. I'm already on a ton of different medications for my other health conditions. I don't want another one just for this. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to "treat myself" with a nice dessert or even a slightly sugary drink like lemonade again, either. I don't want to permanently give up my favorite foods for one stupid disease that just decided to worm its way into my life.
I don't know if anyone in my family understands just how distraught I am. It's not their fault; I keep making stupid jokes about my "inevitable demise" to cope/divert attention from how I'm really feeling, and even when they do see that I'm worried, I play everything off like I'm completely fine. But I'm not. My mind is racing at billions of light years per second. I'm barely holding myself together on the outside. And on the inside?
I'm frightened and absolutely lost. I feel like an inferior version of my brother. I was born first, but I also have the vast majority of medical issues between the two of us, with this whole situation increasing the gap further; it feels like the universe used me as a rough draft before "perfecting" him. I know that's not true, but emotions don't really listen to reason and truth, you know? I don't feel anything negative toward him, and I don't wish any tragedies on him to "make up" for what I'm going through. I'm just confused and upset. I'm scared that I won't really have a chance to simply live life the way others my age do.
I don't want to lose my ability to enjoy life.
My freakshow of an endocrine system has me like
Normalising certain things can be dangerous - especially around mental illness and physical illness. A good example of this is how period pain has been normalised.
People with periods often dismiss their pain on the basis of "everyone gets a little pain", doctors dismiss painful periods, specialists dismiss them too as it's so normalised to have painful periods where it can be a symptom of severe chronic illness; endometriosis, polycystic ovaries, adenomyosis, even kinds of gynecological cancers can present as "a painful period"
Destigmatising painful periods (and honestly, pelvic health for all people) helps to push societal acceptance and awareness of the fact that those issues exist, and allows for conversation when problems arise.
The sad thing about being chronically ill, especially as a teen: how many of your own boundaries you have to jump over to gain support.
I had my first invasive pelvic exam done by a gynecologist at the age of 13. Age of consent is 16 here. I wasn't old enough to consent to having sex but I had no choice but to accept the pelvic exam, including a transvaginal ultrasound, if I wanted any kind of further treatment - I didn't want to let a random stranger feel around inside my body but to for them to continue to testing, I had to. They gave me the illusion of free choice, but realistically, I only had one option if I wanted my pain to go away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I had the exams when I did, and that they meant I got diagnosed with endometriosis in four years rather than the usual seven.. but that's not to say they haven't affected me in the long run.
*Me starving myself to lose weight *
My PCOS, that makes me pile on weight because that's just what it does: hi :)
*6 months with no weight change at all when I'm 10lbs away from my first gw *