calzone

I thought I'd de-lurk and introduce myself with my story:

I was diagnosed as "probably" having PCOS in 2000 and promptly put on birth control to regulate my cycles and because my gyno liked to keep his college student patients on birth control. He actually said that to me! What a mofo, right? Yeah, I stopped going to him when he told me that I'd lose weight if I "stopped eating so much food". Leave the nutrition advice to the nutritionists, dude.

Anyways, after 4 years of the BCPs really screwing up my system and making me generally miserable, I stopped taking them. Since then I moved to Boston (from Ohio) for grad school, got a real job and thus health insurance and now I have an endocrinologist who is treating me sans the condescending attitude and now I have an official diagnosis and medication that might actually do something. She just put me on Metformin, and I'm working my way up to 1500mg. So far, the side effects have been nearly non-existent, which is encouraging.

I'm pretty stoked about the Met, because I've had blood sugar issues my entire life without actually being diabetic. I almost fainted once in high school during choir because my lunch period was way too late in the afternoon. Man was that embarassing. I learned that day that I was better off eating nothing in the morning than ever eating pop tarts.

I've been doing a pretty intense weight lifting routine for the past 6 weeks from the book The New Rules of Lifting for Women (which I enthusiastically recommend). I've definitely gained some muscle (I have the beginnings of some pretty awesome looking shoulders), but have yet to lose any weight. Hopefully the Met will turn that around a bit.

Anyways, I'm not nor will I ever be trying to have kids. Just something that I have no interest in. I realize that PCOS is usually diagnosed when ladies are dealing with infertility, but are there any ladies out there that, like me, aren't horribly interested in the fertility aspects of PCOS? I'm just wondering.

Also, as an aside, I noticed some startling trends in book cover designs when I was doing a research dig on PCOS (I'm a library student, research is my thing). A vast majority of women's health publications have covers that are either pink or covered in flowers. Or both. I found this completely hilarious.

Wow this post is a little all over the place...anyways, Hi!