My Journey with PCOS (Part 1)

I've posted a page with a summary of our journey so far, but I thought I'd give a more detailed story.  Just a warning, there may be some TMI involved.  So here goes:

From the time I got them, I knew something was off with my cycles.  From the get go, they were never regular, months would go without a new one starting.  When I finally convinced my mom to take me to the doctor about it, when I was around 16, the doctors would just laugh at me, make jokes about whether I was pregnant (impossible), and tell me I would get more regular with age.  Not something I appreciated.  It wasn't until I was in college that I finally got a doctor to take me seriously.  After some testing I was diagnosed with PCOS.  The doctor tried to convince me to go on birth control but I refused, so she just proscribed me prometrium (progesterone) to take to bring on a cycle every few months.

My sophomore year of college I treated with a chiropractor/ naturopath.  After several months of adjustments and supplements, my cycle did start to regulate.  However, the cost of treatment got prohibitive, and I got lazy about taking the supplements, so I stopped treatment and eventually the irregularity returned. For the rest of college I didn't give it much thought or get much more treatment.  For the most part, I considered myself lucky to not have to deal with periods.  I got lazy with taking the prometrium for the same reasons...

After college I went to law school and, as a stress eater, began to gain weight which in turn made the PCOS worse.  I had a blood test and tested positive for insulin resistance.  After again urging and failing to convince me to get on birth control, my doctor proscribed me Metformin.  However, for the same reasons I didn't take the prometrium regularly in college, I was pretty bad about regularly taking the metformin (I was a bad patient). At that point I got a cycle about once every 6 months, which was fine with me.  PMS made me too moody and foggy headed, which made studying more difficult.

Another important development in law school was meeting the hubs.  While its a story for a different post, we clicked from day one, and I think both of us had a feeling that this might be it :).  A little after a year we were engaged, and we were married a month before our second dating anniversary. We had a lot of talks about whether we would try to avoid pregnancy or not, considering I still had to finish law school and he had to find a  job.  In the end, we figured we would just wait to see what would happen, as we figured it might take a little longer to conceive with my PCOS.  Plus, my doctor and others at the time told me that NFP wouldn't work with my PCOS and irregular cycles, so I shouldn't waste time learning it.  Oh if I only knew...

(To be continued)