Learn about your body!

So here it is, I have this condition that I'm trying to come to terms with, understand and piece together any information I possibly can. If anyone has or is going through this experience I want you to know you do have a voice, ask those questions you need toask, seek out the best doctors and specialists for you! It is you that is on your journey no one else . Do what is right for you and treat yourself accordingly! 

After not knowing for so long it was a huge relief to know that there was an explanation for why my cycle was so irregular and that I was not alone, this condition is becoming more common than ever and I'm starting to wonder why ... more and more women in my generation are having fertility issues, hormonal imbalances and being diagnosed with conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS! I can't help but think there must be something else to blame , could it be the pill , food or other chemicals within our environments?

The more and more I started to open up to the world about my PCOS the more I grew to realise I didn't need to face this journey alone , asking for help is the best medicine without help this can become toxic and harmful leaving you to feel isolated and alone! No one wants that.   

I started to do my own research into PCOS condition and the more I found out the more I started to second guess my diagnosis , what I was reading just did not add up. I barely had any of the symptoms which occur or effect women with p c o s .  The only common link I had was the irregular periods and the cysts, I tried for so long to pretend and discard my diagnosis and get on with my life.

Life is hard when you start feeling not 100 percent , when your mood swings are just all over the place, I started to feel like my personality is changing I couldn't tell how I was even feeling my hormones were all over the show. I was angry, I was sad, I could swear at everyone or cry at the drop of a hat ! It started to occur to me that John was walking around me on egg shells as he didn't know what Hayley was going to become unleashed . This is not how I want to live my life, dealing with hormonal imbalances really takes its toll, if you ever see me in a bad mood this could be potentially why.  

I was still feeling bloated, chronically fatigued , some days I felt exhausted mentally , physically and emotionally I felt like the laziest person in the world but I couldn't change it. Some days I would come home from work and all I could do was lay in bed and fall asleep it became such a habit that it began to rule my life. I knew I needed help and I needed it now. I will tell you this now don't let anything in life destroy you , whatever it may be it can knock you down. But choose to get up , choose to fight and carry on!

That's when the lovely people i spoke about in my previous posts come into play! I am forever grateful for all the people I have met along my journey, the saying goes people come into your life for a reason and one way or another I do believe this is true. My certain situation is not the journey that i would have chosen for myself but you have to see the positives within any bad situation and my positives are the people.

The people I have met along the way, and the kindness and support I receive from all the special people in my life that love me

"There is a story behind every person. There is a reason why they are the way they are. Do your best to consider this always, as it helps us to bring curiosity rather than judgement to our interactions"

The diagnosis!

The unknown can be incredibly stressful. When things aren’t quite right all you want is an explanation at the time, however that answer you get may not be very pleasant.

Here I am sitting in the waiting room with my mum at the age of 22. I hoped I was going to find out some answers to why I had a missing menstrual cycle! However, as some of you who are reading this may understand, the feeling of awaiting results that you need to hear but may not what to hear is a pretty daunting experience! You certainly can't prepare yourself for what your about to hear, even when you want to know what's wrong!

So as I lay on the bed with a wand in my private parts I start to panic (what if she does see something or tell me something is wrong how am I going to cope ) I get down from the bed and the specialist starts speaking.

"Hayley your scan shows that your ovaries have many cysts and folic particles. I hear the word ovaries and I immediately start panicking in my head. SHIT this is not good, what does this mean for me when I want to have the children I have always dreamed of?

the Dr carries on talking, she is now using so many technical words that I semi switch off she blurts out the words polycystic ovarian syndrome, short and sweet she hands me a piece of paper explaining the condition in a very confusing way and sends me on my merry way.

During our short conversation as I sat on the couch like a possum in the headlights, I started to cry. I had no idea what I had ahead of me, what this meant for my future, my health or if it was curable! I was hoping she had it all wrong because the thought of now having a diagnosis scared me a whole lot more!

As I was leaving out the door, I built up enough courage to ask the question about babies. I was 22 years old and not ready to be a mother but I knew deep in my heart that when the time was right I would want nothing more than to be a mother. As I asked this question I was so scared for the response, the reply back was, “it is possible but with your condition you will need some help. When the time comes I will see you again”.

I left the room feeling like my dreams had been crushed into a million pieces! I had so many more questions yet I couldn't find the words to talk. I was relieved that I knew why I didn't get my period, anxious because I knew nothing about this condition and worried about what my future may hold! And to this day I have all those roller coaster emotions as this condition is so unpredictable and not one person that I know who has been dealt this condition like me is ever the same! It affects women in so many different ways! And it is down to you and you alone to discover and find out what works for you and your body and find the courage to hold your chin up high and carry on!

"Promise me you'll always remember your braver than you believe, and stronger then you seem, and smarter than you think " (Christopher Robin to Pooh )

 Here is a link that will tell you more about PCOS for anyone who is interested. It may be worth a read as a few of my friends and people who I have recently connected with are now questioning whether their own menstrual cycle is right...

http://www.healthline.com/health/polycystic-ovary-disease#overview1

The road to answers.

So here I am trying to find out why I feel like shit most of the time , why I feel bloated all the time, why I'm throwing up some of my food , why I'm also constipated and bleeding every time I go number twos!! I felt like one hell of a mess!! My periods were non-existent and i only occasionally was greeted by it throughout the year!

That's when my friends and family jumped in they have been my biggest supporters throughout everything I have been through! I am a very open and honest person who does find it easy to communicate about personal things and what is going on with my life which is why I thought it was about time to write down and express some of the struggles that I have been dealt with ! I can hopefully help someone that may need to hear and let them know that they are not alone!

Friends and family come into this journey a lot; I couldn't and wouldn't be functioning without you all! Along the way and throughout this journey I have meet wonderful people who are now my friends and who I feel so privileged to have found. These wonderful people will come in the following blog.

Right so I am 21, back to the Drs I go, I referred myself to several specialists this year. First it was to see a surgeon that gave me a colonoscopy where I had a camera placed inside me to see what was going on in my stomach. I thought yay I will finally get some answers and it will all be worked out. However all I got back from this was they believed I had inflammation of the stomach and a touch off Irritable bowel syndrome!

This is when I began to really look at what I was putting inside my body! I changed the way i was eating I ate a healthy diet in the hopes that I could have a healthy functioning body.

It did get a little bit better due to some of the healthy life style changes I had made. I was in my final year of study so the pressure was starting to ease I could just focus on myself and go back to a 9-5 job not an all-night studying stress freak, who John was probably starting to really get sick of. The food changes and other things had helped a little but no the bleeding continued and so did the bloating and the stomach cramps. It was a vicious cycle where I still believed I wasn't getting adequate support or advice from health professionals.

My next move was to see a gynecologist, this is where the answers I didn’t want to hear came..

"When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this you haven't." (Thomas Edison)

Let there be room for the unknown

So, life is pretty full on for me during this time of my journey. I'm living in a flat with some pretty incredible women who I can now call my best friends. I'm 19 - 20 studying full time towards becoming a qualified early childhood teacher, working full time and partying every Thursday, Friday, Saturday eating rubbish and generally living pay check to pay check sometimes really struggling wondering how I'm keeping up with life .

I put a brave face on and just carried on . The ones who saw my bad side were my Mum and Dad at this stage I had no boyfriend. So my parents would get an ear full about all of my problems and how I was generally feeling some very heavy pressures due to studies and my job and I felt my health was just deteriorating!

I look back at this time and I don't know how I even got up in the mornings, every day I would have a sore stomach which I couldn't explain , I would try to ignore it because I needed to keep up with the girls in the flat. So the fact that I should have been studying or catching up on some sleep was constantly put to the back of my mind. Don’t get me wrong, these were some incredibly fun years, with lots of amazing memories but amongst all the madness I couldn't shake the feeling of knowing that something was wrong with me . I hadn't been on the pill for a long time now so I knew it would be out of my system, my periods were still very irregular to the point where I had no idea when it was going to show up or even if it was going to show up at all . I was constantly counting the days till I my period returned, to me my period was my friend others dreaded this occurrence every month and here I am praying for it. During some years of my life I have gone more than eight months without a period, normal right ?? Not!

It came to the point after my 21st birthday that my health and well being really started to pack right up. I was not myself anymore and I did not know what was going on. It was time to get some answers. During this year I went to so many doctors ... so many appointments yet no one seemed to really tell me what was going on with my body and then came that word again (pill) NO I'm not going on the contraception pill!

During these testing times, I discovered that I had real feelings for my best friend, John. John became my boyfriend and this relationship was full on from the moment it started, turns out I had already been in love with John for a lot longer than I ever let on ! So life was on track knowing I now had my best friend along for the ride! And boy was he in for a ride!!

" let there be room for not knowing. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won't have a title until much later. Don't let the un certainty deplete you. Embrace it and let the not knowing enliven you."

(Dr Libby Weaver)

My hormonal roller coaster

Everyone has their own paths to walk in life and this is just a bump in my road (our road, because it now involves my husband ) he has become part of the journey too and to be honest It’s so good to finally feel not so alone! ❤️

First I need to take you back to when it all you started ..

From an early age I had a fair idea that something was not quite right with the woman parts of my body. I was 16 by the time I meet my friend (which normally greets us once a month) for me this was very different. My period never seemed to come, it came when it liked and it didn't really hang around too long! I felt very un-feminine due to the fact I was so old when I got my period!! I didn't really have any clue about what my friends were talking about as they had their periods all at a very young age. They would all be talking or complaining about their periods or talking about the pill / and I just had no idea about any of that!! I was just wishing that one day soon I would get the damn thing.

When I think about it, I remember feeling really embarrassed that I had not started my periods yet, and I knew it was not normal. I did start to worry and wonder why it hadn't turned up when one of my friends started at the age of 11!

I know now that everyone is different and I probably shouldn’t have been comparing myself to my friends. But that's when the stress started and the worrying all began.

Honestly I think I was just getting my period when I became sexually active so then I dragged mum to the dr with me and told her I needed to go on the pill due to my periods , but actually it was a bit of both , trying to cover my ass with a contraception pill so I didn't become pregnant before I actually wanted to be!

Then came the dreaded after math of the pill! How can one tiny little pill do so much to your body? I met a completely different Hayley when I started on my pill journey ...being 16 and a very daring teenager my parents probably thought I was the devil! I had terribly bad moods, and incredibly sensitive!! Also I started to realise the pill was doing funny things to my body! The pimples came, the stomach pains came and I also just started to feel generally sick! The pill also didn't do anything for me , my periods where still irregular it never came when it should have and was so un predictable I started to think wtf is wrong with me ...my doctor would always say okay well that's not the pill for your body then , here have another , and another , and another I think I did this six times then the last straw for me was being out one night with my girlfriends. I suddenly ended up curled up in a ball on the ground screaming in pain / the pain I was experiencing was so sharp and intense that i yelled out I want to go the hospital - then I realised shit I'm too scared to go there , I'll go home and visit the Dr the following day!

After braving the doctor and telling her about the pain and what I was experiencing she said my stomach had started twisting which was happening because of the pill! So I had a few days off school and I had to take some other drugs to help settle my insides, then I was offered another dreaded little white pill! I couldn't stand going on another one so I didn’t.

I think I was about 18 when I decided enough is enough I'm not going to be on this horrible pill anymore and for me I believed i was doing the right thing! But the doctors always tried to convince me other wise and get me back on one!

The one thing i have learnt through this journey I am now on is, you know your body better than anyone else, stay in tune to it and follow your intuition. I'm really glad I decided to follow my gut and take myself off the pill!

"All of the tiny decisions you make throughout your day, create your lifestyle " (Dr Libby Weaver )

Goodbye little white pill !