One year. Think about how many things you can accomplish in one year. How many things can change, far you can come, places you can visit, people who come into your life, goals you can check off your bucket list.
Never in my life did I think I would be stuck for an entire year in one reality. Purely against my nature and personality, not achieving the one milestone I set out for myself in 2020.
I’ve always approached life with a goal oriented attitude. Look through the archives of this blog if you need any proof of that. If I research, work hard, focus and set my mind to it, I can do anything! I can train for that triathlon, travel the world, read 30 books in one year, buy a house. It’s all within my reach and it’s up to me to achieve my dreams. I can’t think of anything that I’ve set out to do and haven’t been able to somehow figure it out yet.
All until I realized I have a medical condition.
No matter how much I tried to change my situation, it’s out of my control. I can eat all of the right foods, exercise appropriately, take supplements out the wazoo, and research for that one thing that will maybe make the difference into late hours of the night. And I’m literally willing to do anything to change my circumstances.
But nothing does. My learned response of solving problems through research, focus and sheer will do not apply here. The harder I try, the harder the process becomes. Because infertility and PCOS have a plan of their own.
I was diagnosed with PCOS at age 25. As a teenager, my periods were straight up unpredictable. There was no rhyme or reason to them. And like many women I’ve come across in my late night Instagram rabbit holes, my doctor blindly put me on the pill (no tests, no diagnosis, no further discussion I might add) and on the pill I stayed until I was about to marry my husband. Thankfully I then had the sense to figure out what was wrong with me. A fertility specialist in Indiana, my obgyn in Chicago and a PCOS specialist at the University of Chicago all confirmed that yes, you have PCOS.
PCOS isn’t curable. Scientists are still trying to figure out why 1 in 10 of us women have this incredibly annoying condition. Everyone experiences PCOS differently but for me it makes it difficult to lose weight, makes me tired, gives me horrible hormonal acne all along my jaw line, and has made the hair on my head thin to about 1/4 of its original thickness. It’s a horrible condition outwardly but inwardly is where it really hurts. With PCOS, you do not ovulate normally and some women do not ovulate at all.
Hence, my year of infertility. My year of not progressing forwards with my life. My year of failing to become a mom and raise a family with Dan.
There is so, so much pain to express and I have experienced a large number of traumas in the past year. There has been momentum and small wins that are hard to recognize sometimes because I’m still not pregnant.
However, I’ve suffered in silence too long.
I’m finally at the point in this messed up journey that I’m craving an outlet. It feels too personal at this point to post on social media so I’m coming back to my comfort zone, writing in this blog. This blog has gotten me through a lot of ups and downs and has been reinvented a couple of times depending on what stage I’m at in my life. I’m hoping it will help me continue cope, process, and document as it always has.
Painting My Spirit Gold 