PCOS Messages for November, 2001: Re: Please help with with a school project!

Re: Please help with with a school project!

From: Sonnet (anonymous@obgyn.net)
Wed, 28 Nov 2001 02:10:08 -0600 (CST)

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Previous message: Kim: "5 years of one specialist after another, then I found this site! Thank God!"
In reply to: Meaghan: "Please help with with a school project!"
Next in thread: UK: "Re: Please help with with a school project!"

Hi Meaghan, best of luck with your project! It sounds like it is a real winner - very exciting and interesting stuff! Please let us know how it goes.

>Here are the questions:
>1) How old were you when you were diagnosed with PCOS?

Let's see, 1999, so I had just turned 23.

>2) How old were you when you think you should have first been diagnosed?
Definitely by 9, since I started gaining weight rapidly (lik 100 pounds a year rapidly,) losing my hair, and becoming seriously depressed that year. If nothing else when I hadn't had a period by 15!

>3) How old were you when you first started showing any signs of PCOS?
Technically I guess, since birth. I have been hypoglycemic since I was a baby. But all the other stuff showed up at 9, like I said before.

>and last, 4) If there had been information available to you in your
>school about PCOS, do you think it would have improved the quality of
>your life either at that age or now?

Oh.. my... god, there are NOT words to explain how much the quality of my life would have been improved. I didn't HAVE a quality of life for at least 14 years. I was miserable, suicidal, and I learned that I wasn't worth anything to anyone because I looked so crummy. It will take me many more years of therapy to get past that. I wanted to die for so long. I was self-mutilating and cut my arms and legs, stuck pins into my face, even tried to break my leg with a hammer. My mother and grandmother told me they were deeply disappointed in what a terrible daughter / granddaughter I had turned out to be because of my appearance. Everyone, I think, feels different in high school. But I weighed 250 pounds in high school. I never had periods like my girlfriends did. I knew I was different, and I truly believed that I didn't deserve anyone's love or friendship, and that I was a very very BAD person because of how I looked. I must be very bad to look like I did.

Finding out I had PCOS was like a light suddenly coming on. Finding this board (or, the predecessor to this board!) was like finally finding acceptance, a place I belonged, a place where I wasn't horrible.

I have dedicated my life to educating other women, girls, and doctors (or anyone else!!) about PCOS. I will NOT let other women suffer like I did. I simply won't. It's too bad, too horrible to conceive of other people going through it. I will do everything in my power to make sure that every other woman with PCOS knows that she is the victim of a disease, and not a bad person. I want everyone to know that there is help and they don't have to hate themselves. It kills me to think of women who don't know this yet.

My God, imagine if they had told me in high school what was going on. Think of all the years of shame and self hatred that I would have been spared. Please please do this! You can literally save lives!!

--
Sonnet Fitzgerald, PCOS Association, Online Community Liaison. Email: sonnet@pcosupport.org

Next message: Sonnet: "Re: Help symptoms"
Previous message: Kim: "5 years of one specialist after another, then I found this site! Thank God!"
In reply to: Meaghan: "Please help with with a school project!"
Next in thread: UK: "Re: Please help with with a school project!"

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