I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) shortly after my 18th birthday. My family had moved cities and found a new family physician who wanted us all to come in for individual check-ups so she could have a record of our medical histories. The day I went in to see her, she first asked about my beard.

“You have a lot of facial hair. Do you have problems because of that? I mean, social problems?”

I was taken aback by her question. No one had ever asked me that, not even my last physician — a male doctor who had been practising medicine for over 15 years.

Me, circa 2007

“Umm, actually, I do have problems sometimes. I’m not very confident about my looks — I never tie my hair back. I only keep this one hairstyle because I want my face hidden all the time. I’m scared people will make fun of me if they see my face.”

I had never said that out loud in my entire life.

“Hmm, tell me about your periods. Are they heavy? Regular? How’s your PMS?”

Something else no one had ever asked!

“Uhh, they’re actually not that regular. They’ve never been regular. Last year I only had my period three times. They don’t follow a cycle. But when I have them, it’s very painful. I can’t go to school some days. I PMS a lot; my boobs get bigger, and they hurt a lot too. I worry I’m going to get my period at any moment.”

She was writing all this down and slightly nodding her head as I spoke, almost as though she knew what I was going to say. She then told me to undress to examine the rest of my body.

“You have hirsutism — excessive hair growth for a woman,” she said towards the end of the exam. “Your BMI is also a bit out of the normal range. Do you struggle with weight loss?”

I gently nodded, a little ashamed of myself for not being able to lose weight as easily as others seemed to do.

“I’m going to refer you to an endocrinologist. I think you may have some sort of hormonal imbalance. It’s not normal to have three periods a year at your age, your cycles should have regulated by now. Your hair growth might also be due to that.”

I was shocked! There was a reason I was like this? It wasn’t just a curse? The possibility that I could have been suffering from some sort of medical condition had never crossed my mind. My entire worldview of how I saw myself changed at that moment.

I called the endocrinologist’s office as soon as I reached home and got an appointment for three months later. The wait was absolutely brutal!

The endocrinologist asked me all the same questions as my physician. After our first consultation, she told me we needed to make sure I had what she suspected, and for that I would need to take hormones for a few months and then have my blood drawn to see how the medication had affected me. She also sent me for an ultrasound to get a better look at my ovaries. After a year of testing out various pills and having my blood drawn about half a dozen times, she finally revealed to me the source of all my physical and mental anguish that had plagued me through my teenage years.

“You definitely have PCOS. It’s great we caught it so early; there’s no cure but there is treatment, and the earlier we start, the more likely you are to see permanent results.”

I was relieved. It seemed like the life I had lived up until then hadn’t been real, and the truth was now finally being revealed to me. I cried after leaving her office that day.