ugh....in tears!

beachgirl84 · 12-02-2008, 02:28 AM

so i have been on metformin for just over a month and haven't seen any results yet (except a 10 pound loss, but at 5'2'' 230 lbs i expected more with a change in my diet)

but i just read through the FAQ's for Metformin and IR and i broke down in tears.

i was dx with pcos when i was 17 (i'll be 24 in 22 days yay!) and his solution was birth control. and now 7 years later, i realize birth control was the dumbest thing he could have given me. he said to my mother and i at the time (i was only 17 lol) "your daughter has polycystuc ovarian disease (thats twhat he called it back then) and that was it. of course, being 17 i was like "who cares, i don't get my period!!!" (i was a competitive dancer so i didn't have weight issues..) well FF a year later when i am 18, stopped dancing and discovered my body couldn't consume 1800 calories a day and lose weight! when i turned 18 i started college and the hours were just awful and the food available....was well FAST food. study groups with pizza and soda. what did i care? i didn't!

now almost 24 and much wiser, i realize my Ob/gyn was nothing but a lazy SOB who didn't warn me about things as losing my hair, unexplained weight gain due to IR and all the other lovely symptons that come with having PCOS.

i'm just in tears. i can't blame him all together - but he could have given me more info than just you have PCOS and here is a birth control pill.

i am just frustrated that i didn't research this sooner! i wish i didn't have the "i don't care" attitude back then....but i really just did not care....conceiving was not on my mind at 18, it just wasn't.

blah

i'm just so upset with everything right now - MAYBE I AM GETTING MY PERIOD FINALLY???? LOL. ***Wishful thinking****

girlie_girl · 12-02-2008, 10:07 AM

hey hun
i know how you feel, its easy to feel a lot of regret and frustration, however its not the way to go. forget about the past, and just look towards the future. educate yourself about your conditions, equip yourself with the correct knowledge, set yourself some goals, and work hard to achieve them!
you will feel much satisfaction knowing you achieved something that wasn't easy to achieve. it will make you stronger.
goodluck

pinklady380 · 12-02-2008, 10:33 AM

Ooooooooo how I feel your frustration.

I was diagnosed at around 17 (im 35 now) back then I was told to go away, nothing to worry about, like you birth control pills arhhhhhhhhhhhhhh when I think back it all now.

I tried for 4 years to conceive my daughter only to be exhausted from going to appointments sitting there in waiting rooms in fertility clinics only to be told YOU HAVE PCOS, YOUR TOO FAT, GO AWAY MAKE ANOTHER APPOINTMENT FOR 6 MONTHS, TRY AND GET THAT WEIGHT OFF etc etc.

I eventually did go on to lose 5 stone and it was the hardest 5 stone I ever tried to lose, with sugar cravings, mood swings, depression on and off etc. Yes I did conceive naturally but the 5 stone went back on and I am struggling ever since with my weight.

Only good thing to come out of the birth of my daughter was my periods returned to a normalish routine and it took 16 months to conceive my son (no weight loss needed!!!!!) after him they returned to bang on 32 days at my heaviest weight ever and for the first time in my life.

I went on to fall pregnant in February this year but miscarried in April. Whilst all this had been going on over the years I was also in and out of doctors complaining how awful I felt, BUT WOULD ANY OF THEM LISTEN.... It was always my WEIGHT. Well I am sure there are "fat" women out there who have energy etc.

At the age of 35 my doctor finally listened to me (after I brought in tons of paperwork) about metforim and put me on it. Metforim changed my life FOR ALL OF 8 WEEKS!!!!!. I felt fantastic like I had never felt before, I felt alive but it was short lived.

After my m/c in April my body finally became normal again in July but periods were 35 days (instead of the 32 for years beforehand) with an ovulation day of 22.

However I am now on CD40 and still no period, opk says I ovulated around 34/35 so I am totally GUTTED. For the first time in years my PCOS has come back to haunt me. I think (i am not sure) that my m/c has caused it all to flare up again, but I feel I am just too old to go down the "hospital route" to get all this sorted. I really thought Metforim had answered my prayers but like I said after 8 weeks symptoms returned with avengence and plus for the first time in around 4 years my periods are starting to become non-existent again.

I am off to the doctors today and I am absolutley dreading those words, DIET, DIET, DIET. I know all this but its soooooo hard when you have nasty nasty sugar cravings going on.

I HATE PCOS, I REALLY REALLY DO!!!

Sorry for the rant, I really needed it, but I am totally with you with doctors totally pushing us aside and not listening to us about this awful condition, I dont even feel human half the time with the constant tiredness, bloatness etc.

RunnerDuck · 12-02-2008, 11:27 AM

I'm 31 and I also spent my teen years being told various twists on "It's nothing." No one ever mentioned PCOS, that's for sure. Some explanations I got:

It's normal for young girls to be irregular.
You have a history of an eating disorder, that's why your periods are off.
Some women just have more hair than others.
You have some Italian ancestry, that's why you have more hair than others.
Take these birth control pills, they will regulate you.

So I spent the next several years going on and off the pills to see if they'd worked yet - no one explained that they only worked while you were on them!!!

I was 22, I think, when I read up on PCOS and went to my doc and said THIS is what I think I have, confirm or deny it - and treat it!!! He agreed to order the tests but also referred me to my OB and an RE... the OB - even now that I'd read up on PCOS - still had some mind-blowing ignorance in store for me.

"You can't have PCOS because only obese women have PCOS."
"Even if you do have PCOS, it doesn't cause infertility. It just means you maybe have 1 or 2 chances a year to get pregnant whereas the normal woman has 13."

Still trying to wrap my head around that one.

You are not alone, you are not to blame - personally I am not convinced BCPs are as evil as some think - I wouldn't worry too much about having used them - just learn what you can now and do what you can now. Educate yourself. It is amazing how much doctors don't know about this. Learn and do what you can and move on.

siamlovex2 · 12-02-2008, 01:29 PM

Hi again beachgirl,

I've responded to you on another thread, but I just wanted to offer you some support here, too. I've read in some of the research I've done that sometimes it takes a while for metformin to kick in, and usually it doesn't work well until one gets up to 1700mg - over 2000mg a day. You should read this articles on "syndrome w"; it applies more to women much older than you but there's some good info here that can apply to women with PCOS and IR, too. It also explains why male doctors are not that good at diagnosing and treating these conditions:

http://health.discovery.com/centers/...syndromew.html

I'm not trying to make excuses for your doctor as I think he was most likely negligent in your case. However, drs are usually very busy and don't think to explain all of the particulars about a specific disease. I suspect that a lot of them probably assume that the patient will do her own research and get answers on her own about the illness. I have a very good female doctor who is very sympathetic to my concerns, but even she didn't really explain PCOS that much in detail to me. I had to learn about PCOS mostly from this site and other online research.

I share your frustration, as I've made some bad choices regarding my health in the past as well. I suffered from an eating disorder on and off for years and sometimes I wonder if the eating disorder caused my PCOS to surface, or if not understading the symptoms of PCOS that I was experiencing caused me to resort to an eating disorder (I personally think it's more the latter). Sometimes I feel guilty and angry about having the ED, but all I can do now is educate myself as much as I can and be my own advocate for my health and recovery. You shouldn't blame yourself for not knowing about PCOS, as not very many people out there know much about it. I didn't know it even existed until I was diagnosed with it just last month!

Anyway, don't lose hope and hang in there...there's a lot of people here on these boards who've had success with their recovery and beaten PCOS, so there's hope for us, too.