[kimicat76]

Hello! I have not posted in quite a while. I feel the need to share my story after being inspired by the Mystery Diagnosis PCOS episode. Here goes!

I was a fairly normal kid. A little on the small side. Then when I was 11 I started to grow breasts like all girls do around that age. I got my first period on my mother's birthday, March 12th when I was twelve the following year. The pain was so bad I remember being crumpled in the floor of our vacation van. We would take trips every year to Kentucky to visit family. I also remember going to the ER and being looked at by several doctors. They didn't know what was wrong other than "she is becoming a woman".

My periods were always irregular. Around 3-4 months apart and lasted for anywhere from 7-10 days. Always so very, very painful. It would be so bad, that I couldn't go to school. I knew my period was coming because I would feel sick to my stomach and vomit for around 3 days before. I gained a ton of weight and was always around 160 lbs as a teen. Everyone assumed I just ate too much. In fact, I very much loved fruits and veggies. Didn't care much for meat and was always an active teen. We were poor so no one bothered taking me to the doctor. I just assumed it was normal as my whole family was large, especially the women.

Fast forward to when I was 17. I had lots of family issues and was convinced to live with friends for a while. I stayed with them exactly a year. Her father was a terrible dictator. Never physically abusive just verbally lashing at anyone who looked at him wrong. He made us work like slaves around the house while he and his wife sat on the couch and watched TV. We would cook and clean every. single. day... I did have one positive thing happen, I lost weight. For the first time since puberty I was a small girl. I never knew how much I weighed though. I know I could fit into size 7 girls jeans and that was a wondrous feeling. I even had a boyfriend for the first time.

I left them after a year, and started gaining weight again. My boyfriend threatened to leave me as he thought I was now a cow. (his words, not mine) His mother forced me to get on depo provera, a birth control shot from ****. I gained close to 60 lbs in a few months. So going from a small girl to now a 200 lb woman was detrimental to me. We lasted for 5 years. He slowly became mentally abusive to me and refused to help me with anything. He even slammed me against the bathroom towel rack once when I told him to get out. I met my husband shortly after that.

We started out wonderful! He treated me like a beautiful queen. I stopped taking the depo provera and shortly after got pregnant with my son. I gained an additional 30 lbs with him to my all time high of 230. After I had my son, I lost around 20 lbs cause you know, that happens when you have a baby =P After that, got crippling postpartum depression. I gained all that weight back.

So here I was at 230 again, depressed, and now a new symptom, acne. MI never had acne much til then. My periods would not come without the aide of birth control. I would stop and start a birth control, only to have normal periods for around 2 months then nothing. No periods for up to 6 months. I would get scared and go back to the gyno. They checked my hormones and such. Came back completely normal.... My last gyno suspected PCOS but did not follow up after my hormones came back as normal. She just said I needed to lose weight. Another gyno told me to try weight watchers, that was the straw that broke the camels back.

I ended up really cracking down and exercised and watched what I ate. Weighed myself daily and denied myself sugar, soda, sometimes bread, you name it. It was tasty I said NOOOOOOO. I ended up losing around 60 lbs. I am not sure what happened but I decided to get off of birth control pills and see what happened. Again, here came the weight and depression creeping back. My husband had to quit his job over his knees. So we switched roles. He would now take care of our son and I would work.

I did not have a period for 6 months and did not have a gyno anymore as we lost our insurance when he quit his job. So I let it slide..... Finally after a year on my new job and 30 lbs later, I am at 200 lbs and now have insurance paid for through my job. I decided to go back to my old gyno but was told they did not take it and I would need a new doc. So I looked around and found a new one. He asked me about my medical past and it really felt like he was listening to me. For the first time! He had lab work done as well. He immediately did an ultrasound after the yearly exam. I heard nothing back for a few days. He put me back on birth control.

This time was different. I have had pain for weeks now. It radiates through my back. I had a natural period after 6 months of nothing. It lasted a good month before I visited the gyno. This birth control is not helping me so I decided to call the gyno again to ask. That is when he told me about the cysts on my ovaries. He said I was diagnosed with PCOS. After doing a bit of research on my own, it all makes sense now. The acne, the weight gain, no period for months and the pain, oh the pain. I keep reading that it is painless to the ovaries but they are wrong. It is up there with labor.

I told my Facebook friends and family and not one person said anything, not even my mother, who is normally all up in my posts lol. It seems that no one cares unless you have cancer or are dying. Does anyone else feel this way?

This morning I saw a 2 lb loss on the scale.....

So there it is and here I am, hello my fellow cysters!!