So...over the last few years I've acquired a number of health problems. Pancreantitis, Diabetes, and insulin resistance. I have never heard of PCOS! It really explains a lot...I've had two miscarriages and (During a period where I bash myself repeatedly) had unprotected sex for a year (with the same guy though! XD)... I wondered (After I got on birth control and started using protection) how I went so long without protection. I think me and my doctor need to have a chit chat. I also have the facial hairs...wax like crazy. Weight is SO hard to get rid of. If anyone knows about pancreantitis it's a very low fat diet. And with Diabetes my diet is also low carb...

I don't like health.

I know, losing weight sucks. I wish I were one of those people that could eat whatever and not gain anything, like my husband. Luckily, I haven't acquired any health problems, besides being obese according to the BMI thing.

Unfortunately it is pretty common for it to take many years for a diagnosis. I don't know how many times in the years before my diagosis I said "it's like we're missing a piece of the puzzle" Well, pcos was the piece.

I'm sorry. For years, hardly any doctors knew enough about PCOS to accurately diagnose, and you'd THINK it would easier to pinpoint these days. I hope you get some answers to your questions soon!

Hi. I can totally relate to you TheTinGirl I never knew about PCOS until i started trying to concieve and didnt have regular periods, I went to my OBGYN and she never diagnosed me with PCOS she only gave me clomid to induce ovulation which didnt work. I got so mad and requested she transfers me to an fertility specialists and without even looking at my ovaries or my results he said oh you have PCOS. So now here I'm trying to lose weight and takin metformin and so far so good I've lots 42lbs and still have about 50 to loose! but i see my symptoms such as facial hair have definetely decreased. Good luck with everything

Y'know what's funny? I work in women's health care and I feel like everyone has PCOS. OK, not everyone... but many many women who come in to our clinic do. And it's not just me. We get referrals all the time for rule out-- as in, confirm that-- it's PCOS.

times, they are a changin'

I read a study somewhere that 10% of women have pcos- that's 1 out of every 10 of us! So in a room with 100 women- 10 of them have it! That's a huge portion of the planet! If there are 3 billion women on earth- there are 300 million of us with PCOS! AND AND AND get this- 50% of the women who have it- do NOT know it- so that means 150 million women are walking around totally clueless as to why they can't conceive/are overweight...

It drives me CRAZY! Unfortunately so little is known about PCOS that we all don't get the help we really need.

I remember when I first found out- first I cried- then I realized it ALL makes sense.

My friend has a daughter who is 10- at ten years old she is VERY hairy. Her mother waxes her arms and legs for her at this point. Her daughter is a CARB JUNKIE. One day I took my friend aside and told her that I was the same way as her daughter- that I have PCOS and told her all about it- I was like you have to stop buying all this chips and stuff- it's hurting her- she may have problems having children- and so on- I don't advocate med's for her- but strongly encouraged her mother to provide better carb options such as whole grains and while I think she HEARD what I said- I think she's in denial that her daughter has it.

I mean now I can pretty much look at a woman and say if she has PCOS or not. It's so easy to tell! Unless they are thin.

I had one friend swear she had PCOS and I told her no I doubted it because she didn't have any extra hair and had pretty regular periods- she went to a doctor who confirmed she didn't have it- I was like WHY would you WANT to have PCOS? And the first MONTH her and her hubby decided to have a child they conceived- I was like uh YEAH girl there is no way

sometimes when you have a bunch of symptoms and every test comes back telling you you are normal, you are just kinda hoping for a positive so that you can get some answers and then start feeling better.

it's very disheartening when you can tell you are not feeling 100% but your Drs. look at your lab results and just tell you 'no, you're fine'.

it's frustrating not knowing what's wrong. you start to feel like maybe your are crazy.

getting diagnosed completely changed my outlook for the better. i just wish that it had happened 10 years earlier. it would have made the last ten years or so of my life far more pleasant.
i was always mildly concerned about my lack of AF from the time i was in high school, but of course no gyn takes seriously the fertility concerns of a teenager. of course, another decade passed and nothing changed. meanwhile i kept gaining weight.
well actually, through high school and half of college i was dieting really obsessively and running about 20 miles a week so i was basically maintaining. but i was soooo frustrated and full of self loathing because i could not figure out why i couldn't seem to lose weight when i felt like i was working so hard. so eventually i just said f**k it, and gave up entirely. needless to say, my weight really began to balloon at that point.
i've been engaged in this battle with my body since i was probably 14 or 15 years old. i just wish that i hadn't spent the last 10 years hating myself for it and feeling hopeless, fat, and ugly. (it's ironic...my mother has always been on my case about my weight, prob since i was about 11, this is a long story for another time. and my father pretty much stayed out of it. but i remember vividly the time when i was about 16 when both of my parents sat me down for a Talk about how they were both worried about my weight. and this was when i hit 140 at the same height i am now. funny how lovely 140 seems to me now. over the years this conversation has repeated itself countless times, and the sting of hearing it from your parents never really goes away.) the pcos diagnosis was the thing that finally gave me the hope to start trying again. also it had the added benefit of helping explain why i seem so sluggish, tired, and distracted all the time. it was actually a really amazing revelation for me. though i'm still very worried about the TTC issue, though i guess first i gotta find a man...

also, i was just thinking i would mention that the hairiness is not always present. in my case, part of the reason pcos never occurred to me is because it is so closely associated with hirsutism. i guess that my e. asian genes override the pcos thing. i don't even shave my legs and nobody knows the difference. i don't say this to be mean or gloat, since it's really neither here nor there. i just mean to say that i think the symptoms like excess body hair, acne, balding, etc. are just things that are commonly found in pcos women and not necessarily diagnostic criteria in and of themselves.

This is true- but in her case- her weight had to do with her terrible diet of fast food combined with her non-existant exercise routine. I guess I felt like she was reaching for an excuse when she really had no health problems and didn't even have a problem conceiving when the time came.

Grr I'm jealous- I want to be "normal."

SWS I am totally jealous- I am constantly waxing under my chin- for some reason the extra hair grows there. I also have to pluck some dark hairs on my stomach- drives me nuts.

Spirono doesn't seem to help I'm asking my doctor to up the prescription when I go see her next week.

When I was a teen my dr put me on BC because I had a hormone imbalance. Then when my insurance ran out that's where the hair started growing in and it all started kicking in. I remember I had the worst insurance at one of my jobs and I went to see the dr and she told me I had PCOS but never said take this or do that nothing. After she came to the conclusion that I had PCOS it was the end of my dr visit. So I just kept living my life. And actually I forgot what it was called. I remember when I didn't have insurance I would have my period every 6 months. But at the time the hair wasn't as bad either and I was thinner.

Now that I have good insurance I went to go see a dr and she confirmed what it was but still never mentioned any type of meds like I mentioned in another post.

When my fiancé lost his wallet we went to go to the social security office and I saw a girl with make up and underneath you can see she had facial hair. And she was over weight. I wanted to reach out but how embarassing would that be.

I am sad yet jealous (but I never admit it to anyone) when I hear someone say they are pregnant. How I would just would love to wake up with morning sickness (and I hear it sucks sometimes) and run to that drug store, buy a $12 pee test and have it come up positive. I don't want to take a pill that is going to help me get pregnant, I want to be surprised too. I feel deprived like I was robbed of the best experience for a woman. My dr said she doesn't think I can't get pregnant but sometimes I feel like it's never going to happen.