I
n ninth grade I admitted to my mom that I wasn’t
getting my period. I was sitting at the head of my
dining room table, my sister was to my right and my
mom sat at the other head, directly across from me. Phoebe
had asked my mom a question about puberty and my mom,
a very frank veterinarian, gave a complete and detailed
medical response.
I stared at my breakfast, a bowl of cereal, and blushed.
I was secretly ashamed that my 11-year-old, stick-thin
sister was normal and how aware I was that I was not.
At school my friends all talked about tampons or pads
and how bad their cramps were and so on. I always felt
excluded. I had nothing to add to the conversation.
My mom, the smartest and most efficient woman I
know, sprung into early-preventative action, recognizing
the signs for a very common Ashkenazi Jewish hormonal
deficiency. Just a month after I told my mom that not
only was my period irregular but I hadn’t had it in over
a year, I wound up in the office of a gynecologist, crying.
My mom was right, I had polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Essentially, my body produces too much androgen, or
male hormones. The hormonal imbalance causes weight
gain, irregular periods, acne, excess hair growth and a
deeper voice. The best part about PCOS is that controlling
your weight is the most effective preventative method
for all the negative symptoms, but that no matter how
hard you work out or how well you eat, losing weight is
roughly a million times harder for someone with PCOS
than someone who doesn’t have PCOS.
But the fun doesn’t stop there! Because of the weight
gain, women with PCOS have a tendency to be at-risk
for developing diabetes and, even worse, issues with
infertility because of the lack of a “regular” hormonal
cycle.
I was in ninth grade when I found out that I had to
start worrying about my fertility as an adult. That I had
to deal with the reality that I might never be able to even
have kids, or might have extreme difficulty conceiving.
That’s an awful feeling, not just because of the crushing
weight of dealing with the far-off future, but because
I was different. Let’s be clear, though, I enjoy being
different in things that I can control. But it’s hard to come
to terms with being “proud” of a hormonal imbalance.
I used, initially, two magic pills to prevent the common
side effects of PCOS; birth control and metformin. The
birth control was used to regulate my periods, and the
metformin was used to help regulate my weight. The
catch-22 is that birth control causes weight gain in a lot
of women. So I was taking birth control to get a period,
gaining weight because of it and using another pill to
suppress the effects of the birth control.
There’s a lot of issues I could cover between ninth
grade and now, such as the disgusting amount of blood
draws (needles are not my friend), the shame in not
feeling as “womanly,” my off-the-chart cortisol levels
and the decision to stop using birth control. But the main
issue I had to struggle with was my body image.
I still struggle, as most women do. I love the “body
positive” movements that have cropped up in the
progressive world like wildfire, but I don’t identify with
them. I have a dichotomic conscious, where a part of me
is so happy with the way I look and the other side just
sees a body that is deficient. I shouldn’t be overweight,
I eat well (enough) and I exercise (during the summer
when school doesn’t consume my life). I make jokes about
my lifestyle but I completely understand the mechanics
of personal metabolism after extensive meetings with
nutritionists and doctors. My body just can’t without a
complete motivated dedication to changing physically
through extensive dieting and excessive exercising that
I don’t have energy for at this point in life.
And I hate that.
I hate the word can’t and I hate that I’m
“procrastinating” my own health. The reality is that I’m
heavier than I should be and it scares me. I want children
one day and I want my own biological children and I
know I want to be physically pregnant and not depend
on surrogacy.
Here’s the most important thing, though: I do not use
PCOS as an excuse for anything I have mentioned in
this article, I use it as an explanation. That distinction
between excuse and explanation is very important to
me. I recognize that to other people struggling with
life-threatening or altering diagnoses, my “frustrations”
with PCOS are minimal, and I respect that.
And to answer your question, yes. Yes I did just spend
an entire article complaining about not getting a regular
period. But I’m not sorry that I did. I really wish I did
cramp and bleed and got acne and was moody and it gross
once a month. But I’m cool with my (sex) hormones. I
never had a major turning point from hating to accepting
the diagnosis and ultimately being OK with it, but the
point is that today, I am.
How to: Be OK with your hormones
1. You just have to.
3B
Wednesday, December 7, 2016 / The Statement
How To: Being Cool With Your (Sex) Hormones
B Y S Y LVA N N A G R O S S
“We demand that sex speak the truth. And we
demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the
deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves
which we think we possess in our immediate
consciousness.”
— French philosopher and literary theorist MICHEL FOUCAULT.
on the record: the greatest human minds on sex
“The body is the instrument of our hold on the
world.”
— French existentialist and philosopher SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR.
“If you’re going to have sex, use a condom.”
— Retired NBA player DENNIS RODMAN.
ILLUSTRATION BY EMILIE FARRUGIA
COVER BY SHANE ACHENBACH