Alarm Clocks- Because every morning should begin with a heart attack

Woman suffering from PCOS had to find out some time in their lives. My story begins with my first doctor’s appointment; I was told that I have a skew uterus and would have to try harder than most people when conceiving a child. To which I replied quite confidently that my boyfriend was in fact well endowed and could reach far inside past the “skew” part. My doctor laughed and I wasn’t sure if she was impressed or horrified that a 22 year old was so ignorant. Anyway walking out of that appointment I was a little heart sore that I had this problem and definitely wanted a second opinion. So the following year when my pap was due I found a gynea in the yellow pages and booked. On the “table” I asked him if my uterus was in fact skew and he gave me the best news I had heard all year, he told me that it was not skew in any way and that was the first time he had ever heard of that “term” he commented calling it a perfect little uterus. I had an internal scan and no abnormalities were found. I left that day with high hopes for my future babies J

Then a year ago I went to another OBGYN that was recommended to me (I have never been to the same gynea twice, I’m not certain why as yet but I have labelled my self as a gynea whore) and every thing seemed to be going well. I asked him that I heard (from a very reputable magazine actually) that there was a scan that doc’s could do to check how many eggs a woman has left so I asked him kindly to do this for me to which he replied that there was no such thing and once again I am left feeling like a bit of a tosser on the table.

He performed an internal scan and I noticed on the screen that there was a rather large amount of black dots on my ovaries. I glanced at it not thinking twice as my best friend has had a few cysts before and it was sorted out quite easily. He also mentioned that my uterus is enlarged. At this point I am starting to worry, a year ago I had a perfect little uterus now I have about 15 tiny black dots on my ovaries and an “enlarged” uterus… Then he sits me down at his desks and starts chatting about symptoms that I should have been experiencing (Cravings of Sugar, Acne, Facial Hair, Absent Periods and Weight Problems) Okay Okay I do crave chocolates every now and again but I mean what woman doesn’t?! Answer me that! As for the acne sure in my teen years I had a few pimples and being on the pill has cleared it all up. I have been on the pill for 6 years, I cant remember ever having problems with my period?! But then I think back and remember actually being happy the months that I had missed not knowing how truly wrong it was to be happy about that. And I am very few of the lucky ones that don’t have a weight problem. Anyway, he goes on to tell me about the LH HS FU hormone imbalances and that my ovaries do not release the egg etc and that the condition was called PCOS. Walking out of this doctor’s appointment I was more worried about the stupid enlarged uterus.

On returning to work I googled PCOS (WOW that was the worst thing I could ever have done), my biggest fear is not being able to have children and there it was in black and white “PCOS leading cause of infertility in woman”. Let’s just say my heart broke a little that day and has been broken ever since. I was perfect a year before and then out of no where like a kick in the teeth my life seems to have lost its purpose. I'd give anything to go back to my biggest problem being a skew uterus.

I had no one to talk to about this and every one of my family and friends said that I would be fine and that I will have a child one day, but it was easy for them to say this. I on the other hand was not so confident and researching more and more on PCOS only made it worse. I found support groups on facebook but nothing in South Africa and if 1 in 5 woman have this condition I thought why not start an organisation to create awareness in this country and hopefully support groups where we can share success stories, diets and be there through the disappointments because if you need a shoulder to cry on about this topic no one knows better than a fellow 1 in 5.