My name is Kate and I am from Malaysia. At the point of this post, I am in my 30s this year and married to a loving husband a year ago. When I was younger, the thought of having a family or a child has never been part of importance. However, life can be such an introspective thing and one day, I find myself drawn to the laughter of every kids that I see. It was then, I knew I wanted a child and I discussed with my husband on whether we are ready to have a family of our own. It was a guileless answer and we start our planning.
The Past :
Most people might think that I have plenty of time to conceive as I am only at my 30's and still in a honeymoon stage. First of all, I'm not desperate but rather I knew my irregular menstrual* will have an impact to my fertility. *I am talking about having menstrual once in 4 months since I was 14 years old and aggravated when I was 28 years old where I have only twice in a year. I'm not too bothered to understand the significance of this when I was younger as I do not have period cramp, I have difficult time understanding all these menstrual cycle theory in the science class, and I save on money to have had to buy sanitary pads. I bet this make it sound envious for the normal ladies but I think this is an issue that I hope more women out there understand and take precaution of such cycles. To begin with, I am always a heavier and short person. I work really hard and often stress is my adrenaline to get things done. I do not believe that stress is bad as I think there is good stress; but, more often than not, doctors, friends or families associate irregular menstrual with stress. Perhaps, that is true but again I ignored as I could not find a reason to get any treatment or understand about what is wrong with having irregular menstrual. To me, it's just normal, until now...
Diagnosis:
After about 6 months of trying to conceive and nothing happened, we received a recommendation from our relative to refer to a fertility specialist. Before that, I did went to another general hospital to have pap smear test as I have not had menstrual for the past 5 months. That was the second time in my life where I was told that I might be having Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). The first time was when I visited a gynecologist whom I thought were so exorbitantly priced - I ignored. So, we made that appointment and to summarize it all, for the third time I was told that I have PCOS. This time, this doctor was firmed on this. PCOS is typically a common caused of infertility. If I can use the definition found from google, PCOS is when the hormonal imbalance interferes with the growth and release of eggs from the ovaries (ovulation). To put it simply, if you don't ovulate, you can't get pregnant , or , if you do not have regular menstrual, it means you do not ovulate and so, the chances of you getting pregnant is lower. As far as I know, PCOS is treatable and I do think that if I would have known or aware of this when I was way younger, I could have avoided the treatment that I have gone through now.
Purpose:
I am not an expert per se and not a doctor, whatsoever. I am merely sharing my experience and to allow people who also has similar situation as I am, have better understanding of what I chose to do to battle PCOS. Now, there are no absolute reason on why one can have PCOS. It can be caused by genetic, unbalance diet, and etc, but I was told by my doctor that globally, there is no one caused for PCOS but there are many ways to get it treated now due to the improved technology, better healthcare research and discovery. However, it can't be cured. I decided to start a blog as I realized there is so few people in Asia who talks about PCOS. I had spend an immense amount of time trying to read about PCOS from people in the Western countries where the healthcare system can be quite different from mine. I have no idea of what to do but I just keep researching and had regular consultation with the fertility specialist. One day, I stumbled upon a local public figure through Instagram and I saw her post about PCOS. She even had a youtube video about her having PCOS. I was really happy that finally someone talks about it. Perhaps, many people talks about it but it just wasn't enough. There is one sentence that she said which really resonates to me, it goes something like this :
"Maybe I have not thought about having a kid, but when one day you want to have one, and you realize that your body is going to be a place for a LIFE, it is scary when you have PCOS". - Linora Low -
I read those comment and that is when I realized there are women out there who wish to find some answers to PCOS but not many of them obtain a respond. That is when, I decided to create this blog. It may not help much but I hope someone might find it useful. This is really just a beginning for me and I hope to share my journey with those of you who had PCOS. Be patient and stay strong! We can get through this together.
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- k a t e -
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