My uterus broke up with me.
Warning. If your uncomfortable, with the words — vagina, menstruation, periods, sex, PCOS. I would suggest you not to read this article. Maybe with the subsequent free time, buy yourself a bus ticket to the 21st century?
This is an article for all those women who suspect you could have PCOS/already have it. You are not alone. You can fight this and still get everything you want out of your life. Babies. Amazing insulin resistance. Unlimited orgasms. World Peace. The sky is the limit, but you get my drift.
In my case lets start at the very beginning. Your relationship with your menstrual cycle is one of the hardest, most intense love-hate relationships you will have as a woman. Your teenage years are a whirlwind of secretly gesturing to your girlfriends if you have a stain, or using it as an excuse to get out of PT under the hot madras sun.
Fast forward to that first sexy guy who turns up (you know the one that reads deep Russian poetry, drinks black coffee, sprouts pseudo-intellectual babel and is way too old for you), and you, a slave to your hormones start getting sexually active. Ah, those are the days you spend tracking your cycle, the way Indiana Jones tracked down the lost ark.
You wait impatiently for your aunt Flo, and get slightly panicky when she doesn’t turn up on time. Though it feels like you drinking a two-liter bottle of bovonto( is bovonto still around?) and then running a 10K, and then being kicked in the lower abdomen. I’m sure, you are all empathetic to that sweet feeling when she does turn up and you're sure as hell glad not to be pregnant. All is well with the world again and you can put off that dreaded trip to the gyno.
The last two years have been extremely traumatic, to say the least (think death of a parent, anxiety, remarriage of parent left alive to troll, more anxiety, you get the drift.) Apart from taking a physical and mental toll on me it also messed up my menstrual cycle. Long story short this story begins on a hot summer day when 2 months had passed since aunt Flo had last visited. Since I had spent most of the last few months depressed and not having toe-curling sex, I knew I wasn't pregnant and that it had to be something else. So I made the dreaded phone call and got an appointment with my gyno.
The next morning, I found myself waiting in a place called “Motherhood”, ironically. I am really not good with kids. SO you can imagine my joy, sitting there, in my hard rock T-shirt and worn-out jeans, surrounded by groaning pregnant women or women who have just given birth…looking exhausted holding their screaming infants.
Finally, a nurse ushered me in. She makes me check my weight (groan) and asks me to be seated, I try to distract myself by googling my symptoms (BIG MISTAKE), words like endometriosis, ectomorphic pregnancy, teenage mutant ninja turtles fly out at me. By the time she comes back, to check my blood pressure I am sweating bullets. She double-checks my blood pressure after it reads something like 200. She looks at the state of me and asks me to calm down and takes it again.
I'm left alone in the office, while I try to lose myself staring into a plastic uterus complete with detachable ovaries, the gyno walks in. I haven't seen her in over 2 years. While my mind is churning out ideas for small talk. She cuts to the chase “Are you pregnant ?” she asks. “Haha, not unless you count a food baby” I say. She isn't amused. “No” I say. “Okay, what seems to be the problem.” She listens to me patiently and then suggests I take a scan from down the hall.
The nurse, gently grabs me by the elbow and walks me to the scanning room. Inside, I find a very bored technician aunty. She gestures to the bed like contraption and says “ Take your pants and panties off(I cringe at the use of the word) and lie down”. “Sheesh, buy a girl, a drink first sailor,” I mutter to myself.
I also realize that the universe has played a cruel joke on me and this happened to be the perfect day to wear my hot pink undies complete with tiny donuts all over them.
The “Senior” technician who looks rather like an intern walks in with a white lab coat. I just lie there, cold, going commando, awkward as fuck staring at a spot on the ceiling, while she sets up the scan. Half of me is secretly worried that the scan would reveal something insanely creepy like a smiley face or something.
While I'm processing this, the intern/senior technician takes out this thing, which I can optimistically describe as the love child of a curling iron and a lightsaber, before I can process what's happening she is rolling what looks like a condom (eeek !) on to it.
As realization slowly dawns on me, I slam my legs shut and say. “I was under the impression this was an abdominal scan,” I am SURE this is some hideous mistake on the interns part (let's call her what she is !)
“Madam, married ladies we use transvaginal scan”. The word slowly sinks into me TRANS.VAGINAL.SCAN. My eyes quickly look around for the exit. I gently remind myself, I have already paid upfront for this. IN CASH. (I guess they make suckers like me do that in case we make a run for it). Anyway I man up or rather woman up and curtly nod at her to proceed. 20 mins later, feeling extremely violated and somehow like I have passed my right to womanhood, I am shakily pulling my pants back on, taking the walk of shame back to the gyno's office.
The Gyno looks at my scan and says “Hmm, it looks like PCOS.” There it was. The 4 letters that have since changed my life. She goes on to explain that PCOS is an (I zone out for most of the technical explanation) but snap back into this dimension to hear her end with a “there is NO cure.”
I ask her why women get PCOS she says she has no idea… it COULD be many factors. I can't fathom how, in the 21st century when we have put man on the moon and figured out what an atom is made off, how we couldn't possibly have figured out a scientific reason behind this. (To be continued as a feminist rant for another time)
Its been another 2 years since, that faithful day in the gyno's office. And though my aunt Flo isn't as regular as I would like her to be. I seem to have a pretty decent grip on the situation. The way I look at it, getting PCOS is sort of like going through a break up with your uterus. Like any relationship you get a little too comfortable and take her for granted. She, on the other hand is mad at you for ignoring her and spending too much time partying and bingeing on midnight booze and pizza. Like any jilted lover I need to win her back… but instead of chocolates and red roses, I woo her with early morning swims and a clean diet. Some things that I found that helped me
- Cut out processed sugar completely (it really helps clear your skin as well)
- Workout! (Make sure, you sweat at least for half an hour every day)
- Get a dog. (Well because dogs are adorable but also they calm you down and make you release a fuck tonne of feel-good chemicals into your brain.)
- Have a healthy sex life ( though I really don't need to sell you on this — During sex, we produce a hormone called DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) an immune system booster that also helps decrease depression)
- Mental peace. The calmer you are and the more you try to manage your emotional stress the better for you.
Changing your lifestyle and food habits would not only help you kick PCOS in the ass but also be better off for you in the long run.
Don't look at PCOS as the armageddon and lose hope. Look at it as natures reality check.
