What do periods mean to me?

I would say I've been having periods for ten years now, but that's not quite true. My first arrived, aged 12, much to my initial delight ("Mum! I've started!"). To me it felt like a warm, grown-up secret, an exclusive members-only club of sophistication and sanitary pads - but that soon wore off. Pain for the week leading up to my period, when the floodgates opened and, with the blood, more pain. A full seven days of this before the countdown began, again, until the next one. I would wake in the night in what looked and, more importantly, felt like a crime scene and drag myself down to the kitchen, where I'd rock on the floor while the kettle boiled to make a hot water bottle. I loathed periods. They turned me into a gibbering, sometimes vomiting wreck and they did so swiftly every thirty-three days (I was so regular for a long time, that it took a long time to reach a diagnosis of PCOS: "oh, you have the other symptoms but you're thin and your periods are regular, nevermind, go away,").

And then, they stopped. In the intervening years, things hadn't gone particularly smoothly. At 19, I finally saw a doctor about the pain that over-the-counter drugs barely made a dent in. He was incredulous and asked why I'd not seen someone before, why I didn't want to go on the pill, how I could cope with that pain every month? I was given the label of menorrhagia (very heavy periods) and a prescription that helped a little bit. A few months later, I decided I couldn't cope with periods any longer, and went to see a nurse about hormonal contraception to get rid of the bloody (pun very much intended) things.

I chose the contraceptive injection, Depo-Provera, because it was long-acting and likely to dramatically lessen bleeding and pain, with lots of people stopping their periods altogether whilst using this method (I have since been told that the injection is a terrible choice for someone with PCOS, but I was undiagnosed at the time). My first period on Depo was a bit better, and then the next one came - and stayed. I had the next injection, and the period continued. The pain crept back up and up and I was given the third injection five weeks early to try and stop the bleeding. Things spiralled from there and soon I was on the pill as well as the injection, taking it back-to-back in the hope that things would just stop. I never had another Depo shot but my body took a long time to reset itself. A year of bleeding and endless GPs and pain which was being investigated as potential endometriosis. I think, now, it may be that the hormonal preparations I fed my body were making it ill, but I'll never know.

All of this further warped my relationship with menstruation: it was now a monster that plagued me all the time. I bled on everything. I missed lectures because I was hunched over the toilet bowl vomiting and then wondering if I could take more Tramadol if I'd thrown it up. I saw my body as this hideous, bulky vessel of something malevolent and I would pinch at it in the bath, wishing I wasn't a woman because look what it had brought me. Eventually, with the help of various drugs and then, finally, the logical thing: no drugs at all, the long bleed stopped and, given time, I went back to having periods: there was time in between them. I still felt as though I'd been punched in the face by this heavy dread every time I saw that blood arrive. I still hated them and what they meant to me. By now they were a lot further-spaced than thirty-three days and I assumed it was just taking a long time for them to get back to "normal", but a year later I realised it had been four months since my last one. It was then that I was diagnosed with PCOS.

As I said earlier, it wouldn't be entirely truthful to say I've been having periods for a decade. They stopped eighteen months ago. You'd think I'd be relieved, and part of me was. But not having them, and not knowing when you'll ever have another, stirred up new emotions. The beast inside me that made me resent the body I was born with was something I now missed. I knew my life was a lot easier without them - by now I was working full-time and had fretted about how I'd cope when my period rolled around - but I felt like that special, grown-up membership had been revoked. I was a fraud. I hadn't thought I set great store by femininity and "being a woman", and motherhood didn't appeal to me, but I now felt like a failure of a woman. Every dry month was a reminder that I was different, and taunted me with infertility. I started telling people: "I don't have periods," and I figured that my Mirena coil was probably stopping them coming back, anyway. It wasn't my fault, I was okay.

A few weeks ago, I had a period. I didn't know how to feel. I didn't know if it was a period. I felt like I must be wrong. But it stayed for seven days and then it dutifully left. And perhaps this is the start of things getting better.

Personal: New Years Resolutions

It's in my nature to put things off, and here we are: a week into the new year. I haven't bothered much with resolutions since I was in school (be nicer to my sister, do my homework the day I get it, stop saying "like" so much), but I'm beginning to feel like I let things slide a little towards the end of 2013. In many ways, I learned how to handle my PCOS and ended the year stronger, healthier and happier than I started it, but I've also let a few bad habits sneak back in. So here are my resolutions for the year:

• Quit the gym. Exercise is a brilliant way of tackling insulin resistance but after a couple of months I fell right off that wagon and it's time to stop kidding myself I'll clamber back on. I've been in and cancelled - I'm probably the first person to write "new years resolution" as their reason for leaving on the cancellation form! Find new ways to work out. Tomorrow I begin adult tap dancing classes! Something I'm excited about, and apparently fun can count as exercise? 
• Take Metformin properly. When I started a new job at the end of the summer, my whole routine, including mealtimes, changed and since then I've dropped down to often only remembering one dose a day (and sometimes skipping my Met altogether). I feel lousy for it and can tell it's not helped me at all. I'm setting a twice daily reminder on my phone so I can get back into the swing of things.
• Be my own biggest fan. Over the last couple of years, as I've changed shaped, regained the acne I fought to banish from primary age right until sixth form and - the biggest struggle for me - become steadily hairier, my self-esteem has ebbed away. Armpits4August helped me claw back some of that confidence and I've rung in the new year with a months growth of leg hair to see if I can love that too (I'm still not sure, but I want to find out either way). This year I want to love the body I have and stop yearning for the one I used to live in. But it's okay to have blips.
• Blog more. I still struggle to find PCOS blogs that give me what I'm looking for, so I'll just have to build my own! I'm also looking for all sorts of resources (find me a PCOS zine* and I'll kiss you). Here's to knowledge!

Here's to a wonderful year!

*The latest Armpits4August zine includes more on PCOS than the first one did. Keep an eye on their Twitter to see when and where they're selling it.

Reclaiming myself in 2014

At the beginning of 2013, I was freshly diagnosed with PCOS, stumbling along trying to eat lower GI, cramping badly from a recently-fitted Mirena coil and wondering if I'd ever have another period. I was expecting hair to start to melt away and skin to clear and happiness to sprout out of nowhere but I wasn't sure how I was going to get there. I didn't quite know what I was up against and it was daunting.

A year later and I'm in love with my Mirena, my skin's miles better and I've started to get the hang of which grains when with what (and why is wheat such an enigma?) I'm still steadily growing hairier and it's knocked my confidence a bit further but I'm taking steps to reclaim myself from this condition - steps which began in August when I said hello to hairy pits and realised that hair is just hair. In contrast, 2013 was also the year I was prescribed Vaniqa cream for hirsutism - and the year I said "Sod that," and stopped using it. I began to arm myself with more facts, went to my first Verity conference and started looking forward with a scrap of hope, rather than dread.

In 2014, I'm going to start talking in more depth about some of the things I've just mentioned, and I'm going to keep loving myself and turning every sweetie recipe into a low GI reality. 2014 is about self-care and agave nectar!

This new year, join me in my resolution to be my very best with PCOS and not in spite of it! XXX

Armpits4August, Armpits4ever, Armpits4me

Flaunting my pit kittens #pitpride

In my last post, I mentioned the fantastic fundraising efforts of the Armpits4August team. Last summer, they set up a now annual charity event, the premise of which is simple: participants do not shave their underarms for the month of August, and collect donations for this. All the money from this sponsored fluffathon goes to Verity, who can't afford to keep running as a charity without these donations! As well as this, it's an excellent platform for raising awareness of PCOS and its symptoms ("I'm being hairy because..."), and a ripe opportunity to reclaim your own body and challenge the societal ideal of a hairless woman.

I happened upon a brief news story about the campaign mere weeks before the month began and knew I had to do it, otherwise I would probably hate myself until the next one rolled around. As a woman with PCOS, I've spent perhaps the past year or so admiring body hair on a lot of my friends, but not believing I'd ever reach a stage where I felt comfortable enough to grow out my own. Supposedly "hirsute" (although I'm beginning to wonder what "normal" actually looks like), most of the problems I have with myself revolve around hair and the feelings of otherness they stir in me. Had it not been for Armpits4August, I'd quite probably never have felt strong enough to challenge those feelings - but I did.

I was terrified: I didn't want to tell people my reasons for doing it. I didn't want to have to explain hirsutism, because that meant admitting to people that I was hairy in ways they had never imagined. I spent a week sternly talking myself into it and made a JustGiving page so that I couldn't back out. It went live on the last evening of July. Before August arrived, I'd already raised almost £100. From then, I knew it would be worth it.
I threw myself into the cause. The first hurdle was telling my colleagues. A couple of exclamations of disgust aside, it wasn't half as bad as I'd expected. I bombarded all social networks with talk of hair and impatiently willed my pit kittens to grow. I kept an "armpit diary" and even went on BBC Radio to talk about it (I have friends in high places, if BBC Tees constitutes a high place, which I think it does!).

After a year of silence, I'd opened the Pandora's box of PCOS and I couldn't shut up about it! Everyone I spoke to got an earful about body hair; any premature discussion of Movember was met with interjections about my own hairy fundraising and I began to nurse ideas of starting a PCOS blog (well, here we are...). At the end of the month, I dyed my pits pink, as promised on my JustGiving page, and then, well, I kept them. It took me an entire month to grow them, after all! But more than a bit of fur in a place it should have been anyway, what Armpits4August gave me was pride in my own body. In leaving these two little patches of hair be, I feel so much more control than I ever feel in my frantic attempts to keep the rest of it at bay. I've not backed away from the tweezers just yet, but I've learnt to like my body. Thank you, A4A. Same time again next year?*

*(already taking suggestions for what I'll do now my armpits are already luscious and long)

Although August has long since been and gone, there is still time to make a donation at my JustGiving page until the end of November. Any amount is greatly appreciated!

To join the discussion about body hair in a safe forum, you can find Armpits4August on Facebook and Twitter.

PCOS: the first few weeks

Last autumn, things finally started falling into place for me. After confirmation of PCOS by ultrasound, I  fretted for weeks. And then I decided to try and write down what I was feeling and posted it online. Here's what I wrote:

8th October 2012.
Over the past couple of years, I have not had a completely smooth ride where my health was concerned. I've come to know what it's like living with chronic pain day in, day out and to not know when I'd ever get any respite. And I've been a lucky one: daily life is now, for me, pain-free most of the time. I've come out of the other side of over a year of daily pain with the understanding of how that wears you down until you feel paper-thin and exhausted and overwhelmed by the relentlessness and unfairness of it all. Still, it's left its imprint on my life and general health now. Physiologically, things won't ever be the same as they once were. But I'm happy to take that instead of the stacks of painkillers I once took each day.

Until now, I had resigned myself (after scans, blood tests, private consultants, NHS consultants, surgery and various medications including too many hormonal contraceptives for one woman to take in such a short period of time - period being an appropriate word here) to being one of the "third of women who never find receive a diagnosis for what is causing their problems". And then, a month ago, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome.

A month later and it still stirs up a maelstrom of mixed feelings when I think about it. A concrete diagnosis. A reason for a lot of the things I have had to cope with. But one which means the surgery I had last summer (diagnostic laparoscopy, to look for evidence of endometriosis - there was none) was unnecessary. One which means the contraceptives I was coerced onto were all wrong for me and one for which the signs were there in my first ultrasound, two years ago. Because of this, I am angry. Angry that a lot of the pain and hospital trips I went through probably needn't have happened. I lost out on a huge chunk of the "university experience", including study time and multiple exams. I am incredibly proud to have earned the degree that I did under the circumstances my health put me in, but now it feels like healthcare could have given me better chances. Of course, I am also relieved to know the cause of my problems, and to know that measures can be taken to treat them.

On top of this I am scared and, overall, sad. I am only 21 and nowhere near ready to have children, but I hate that it's been presented as a fact to me that I'm less likely to conceive in the first place, and far more likely to miscarry if I do. On top of this are the increased risks of cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes and endometrial cancer.

But PCOS is manageable, and already I've made lifestyle changes. I've been sticking to the low GI diet, exercising more and six days ago I was prescribed Metformin, to correct insulin resistance and hopefully bring my hormones in check. In a couple of weeks I will have the Mirena coil fitted (eek!) to protect my endometrium from hyperplasia and cancer. These are significant changes but I feel lucky that I have the chance to make them for the good of my health.

I deliberated over writing about this for a while, and even now I am anxious about posting it. I have not been particularly personal with my posts so far and it's alarming to think that many people I know could read this if they happened upon it (which they easily could). But I think that I should. I want to put me into my blog and this is an entire facet of who I am. I know that I personally would like to see blogs by women with PCOS (and I'm going to hunt them down), so why not mention it in my own?

A year later and I hope this will become one of those blogs I was desperately seeking. I was so scared to talk about this then and now you couldn't shut me up! This week is PCOS Awareness Week and it feels good to speak up! I still fret about PCOS sometimes, but it's good to see how I was feeling then and know now that it will all be okay. How about you? How did you cope with learning of your PCOS? Have your feelings about changed over time?