My PCOS and Endometriosis Journey and How It’s Changed My Life’s Path: Part 1

“Be the designer of your world, and not merely the consumer of it.” - James Clear, "Atomic Habits"

The Journey Begins...

This story begins on a beautiful fall day in 2013. I was on lunch break at my job as a technical writer for a Fortune 500 company. It was one of the last warm days of the year and a colleague and I were riding in her convertible along the shore of Lake Michigan. It was wonderful, until I managed to catch a glimpse of myself in her sideview mirror and realized that I could see my scalp through my hair!

What in the world?!

I panicked. And then, I started looking for answers.

I realized that stress can cause hair loss, so I starting trying to find out how to reverse this while still living my pretty high-stress life. The more I read about symptoms of long term stress, the more worried I got. 

At the time, I was working crazy hours, and I lived an hour from my office, which made for a long commute. I didn’t get much time at home. My husband had a similar situation going on with his job at the time. We both felt like we were working our lives away. I often only had the energy to go to work, eat dinner, and go to bed most days.

I was also stressed out because of other health issues I was dealing with. Mainly, I was gaining weight, despite tracking my meals and eating as healthfully as I felt I could with our schedule and working out regularly. My friends and I loved doing hot yoga and HIIT classes, and I had also recently taken up running.

That was the other health issue coming up—my swollen, painful ankles and joints. I’d gone to physical therapy for a chronic ankle sprain, and it helped but it didn’t solve the swelling issue that was happening in both ankles.

I literally, with the addition of the beginning of hair loss, felt like I was turning into an old lady. I was only 32.

By Christmas, I had more questions than answers.

I’d been to my doctor, and showed her my workout and food journals. She looked right at me and told me that no one who was eating and exercising the way I was could be gaining weight. She told me I had made the journals up, and suggested I go on an antidepressant.

Seriously. 

I knew in my bones that this was not the answer, but I had no idea what to do.

That’s when I met the wife of one of my husband’s colleagues. She was a fertility specialist. At a company Christmas dinner, during a random conversation we turned to the topic of health and I told her a little of what was going on with me.

She put her hand on my arm, looked right in my eyes and said,”It sounds an awful lot like PCOS to me. Make an appointment with my office after the holiday.”

She put her hand on my arm, looked right in my eyes and said,"It sounds an awful lot like PCOS to me. Make an appointment with my office after the holiday."

PCOS?

I had no idea what that was. I booked an appointment for after the holidays the very next morning.

Fast forward through several doctor’s appointments, going off of birth control and tracking my cycles for 90 days with the fertility specialist, and experiencing my very first trans-vaginal ultrasound and I had my answer: I did, in fact, have PCOS.

My answer was Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. My hormones were all out of whack. I was experiencing a wide variety of the typical symptoms. I had a history of many markers that I didn’t know were signs of PCOS from the time I’d hit puberty.

I had my answer. Now I just had to take action and change my health for the better!