My Diagnosis, Part 1

I’ve been on birth control since I was about 14 years old.  Well, sort of.  I started taking it at 14 to help with my acne, and I was fairly consistent with it up until my husband at I were ready to start trying for our family.  There were some jogs in that time frame, and that’s how I figured out I had PCOS (or you know, the doctors figured it out and I did my part by showing up for tests!).

How did we figure it out? Well it started with my husband’s (then boyfriend’s) grandmother passing away. Things got a bit chaotic and I got a bit distracted, and I slipped up with taking my birth control pills.  I missed one day, then two days, and before I even realized it I had gone a week or two without taking my pill … whoops. This is where being on the pill from such a young age shows,

I was told when I first was prescribed the pill to wait until I had my period, then start on the pills the following Sunday. Easy peasy.  Well, when you have years of experience taking the pill, doctors are under the impression that you know what you are doing (and I thought I knew what I was doing too) so when I didn’t get my period, I waited for it to come, figuring I would just start my next set of pills when it came. So I waited … and took numerous pregnancy tests … and waited.  I waited some more (and you know, took a bunch of pregnancy tests) and waited.  No period.  I wasn’t terribly concerned because the women in my family have a history of irregular periods, so as long as I got a negative pregnancy test, I figured I would just wait.

My boyfriend wasn’t so happy when 11 months passed and I still hadn’t had a period. I think he might have been tired of the monthly anxiety of testing to see if I was actually pregnant all along.  He told me I should probably go see a doctor.  At this point I might have been tired of the anxiety too, so I agreed.  I made an appointment with an OB-GYN (well, technically a nurse practitioner).

To be continued ... (My Diagnosis, Part 2)