Blatantly Honest and Slightly Awkward

If you've followed me over since my old blog, you'll probably notice that I don't tend to refer to that blog by name anymore. It's actually incredibly hard not to use it/type it here - I used it for years, after all - and every time I log into my main email, or my Facebook account, or any of the online groups I'm a member of, I'm reminded of it. The whole point of moving everything to an anonymous blog was to avoid popping up in Google searches and to have a little bit more freedom to blog; something I just wasn't able to do before.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I had imaged a massive following of stalkers or anything; it's just that there are people out there that I didn't particularly like having access to my inner most thoughts. I could have made my blog private, but what's the point in that? I'm a firm believer of a blog being public for a reason - because what is blogging without the interaction of fellow bloggers relating and commenting?

And so, for a while I avoided blogging about the personal stuff and things flowed along fine. But one day I stopped and realised that hey! I do want to write about personal things. I want to write about the awesome things that are happening in my life. I want to write about the mundane things too. And the not-so-good things. And I want to stop writing things in a 'stalker-proof' way, to avoid those few people finding me and having access to my rantings. Unfortunately to make sure I remained anonymous throughout the transition, I think I lost a lot of readers along the way... but I'm hoping that they'll find me again at some point - I miss them!

So now, here I am, with my first personal blog since the move.

I've been putting off writing this post until things were a little more concrete and until I was completely removed from my work environment - again, just on the off chance that people are cleverer than I'd anticipated and had found this new blog home. Yes, as of today, I've finished up at work. My days working in an office are over, and I'm feeling a whole lot of relief at the thought of not having to go back to ten hour work days for a little while. I don't have a new job, and I don't have any grand plans. I'm finishing up because I have another focus right now.

When I was back home in Sydney, I'd made it a mission to go and have a medical check-up, as I knew that things weren't right with me and wanted to visit our family doctor. I'd visited a few GP's in the UK and no real testing had been done, so I was adamant that I wanted to be checked out. To sum things up, here's a rough idea of my medical history crammed into a few giant sentences:

Unbearable pain and cramping with periods since they started when I was 12; weeks of heavy bleeding followed by months of nothing; put on birth control pills at 14 to manage odd cycle; pain, oh lots of pain. Went off birth control two years ago; periods MIA for five months at a time; pain, oh lots of pain, negative pregnancy tests taken in fits of panic when my period was missing YET AGAIN; break-outs worse than the teenage years; crazy weight gain that was impossible to get off; hair growth on chin (CHIN!) and subsequent embarrassment... and the list could go on and on.

I'm sure anyone reading those symptoms would have a rough idea that something wasn't right - but all I was told to do was to keep tracking everything and give my body time to adjust to being off the pill again. Ha. I think nearly two years is MORE than enough time. Apparently not. In the short two weeks that I was home, my doctor took blood, looked at the notes I'd made on myself for the last few years and ordered several ultrasounds to check out everything internally, and lo and behold, there was a problem.

I have Poly cystic Ovarian Syndrome. My hormones are completely out of whack and I have dozens of visible cysts on each ovary; dozens! I've been put in Metformin tablets initially to try and manage my insulin resistance and to attempt to restore a more regular cycle - but as for eventually trying to fall pregnant, well, that's another story.

It's a bit of a shock to the system when you find out that you're more than likely going to struggle having children naturally. It's even more difficult to take in when you're not even ready to consider children yet - when we're not financially, emotionally or heck, even in the right country to be prepared for the responsibilities involved in falling pregnant and having a baby. Our general plan was always to get a little more stable with our lives back home, and obviously focus on the wedding first, and then look at where we stood in terms of a baby - but now that 'plan' may not be as smooth as we'd hoped.

I'm sure there are plenty of women out there with PCOS who conceive naturally. And since we haven't started trying yet, and won't be for a little while, I'm trying not to jump to conclusions and declare myself infertile. To be honest, I don't know enough about this whole thing to make judgements. I just know that it's scary and worrying and I'm glad I have an actual diagnosis now, to prove that I know my body and I know when something isn't right.

My doctor informed me that losing weight can also help to kick-start cycles into gear so using the drugs as a boost, I'm taking this time to get healthy and to get fit. It will be more difficult than usual, thanks to the insulin & hormonal problems, but I'm determined. I want to have children. I want to be healthy! And thanks to my hardworking fiance and my own little pocket of savings, now is as good a time as any to take some ME time and get this sorted. Lord knows we'll have a whole stack on our plate when we return home, so it has to be now. And now it is!

So there you have it - I think this qualifies as a ripper of a personal blog.

Do you have any experiences or information about Poly cystic Ovarian Syndrome that you'd like to share? I'd welcome your thoughts!