Transcript of
PCOS: Christina's story
Hi, my name's Christina Leach.
I've been suffering from PCOS since I was about 16.
My understanding of the PCOS
is basically it is what it says on the bottle, so to speak.
It's polycystic ovary syndrome,
which means my ovaries have multiple cysts on them.
It's all hormonal, in essence,
it's linked to the level of hormones in your system.
So we have more testosterone, male hormone, in our system than other women.
The first symptoms I had that were obvious was the weight side of things.
I'd struggled with my weight since I was a child.
So there was excessive weight
and I wasn't eating to any great extent
to justify the amount of weight I was putting on,
so there was obviously something wrong there.
I've always had very heavy periods
and I had bad acne as well,
so all in all I was going through the mill a bit in my teenage years.
So I went along to the doctor's and said, "Is there something wrong here?"
I'm just feeling that all these things adding together
are surely culminating in something.
There must be a cause behind it all.
And he sent me along to have a scan of my ovaries
to see if there was anything going on down there,
which is what he suspected.
The scan actually did show that there were cysts on my ovaries.
Basically, as a result of that diagnosis,
he put me on the pill
in an attempt to hopefully reduce the severity of my periods
and help with my acne
and also help me hopefully try to lose weight, I think.
One of the side effects of PCOS is fertility, infertility,
and for a lot of people who suffer from the disease
it can prove devastating when they're trying to have children
because of the impact that the disease has on the ovaries.
It can make it very, very difficult for women to fall pregnant.
I'm very, very fortunate that that actually wasn't a problem for me.
However, I had kind of ruled it out
in the early days of teenage years and later, in essence,
because of the way I looked.
The weight side of things and the fact that I had this excess hair
that I had to shave every morning and every evening
made me really not feel like a woman at all.
So when at one point my periods actually stopped completely,
in a weird way I didn't view it as a problem.
It was kind of a nice thing not to worry about periods
because they were heavy, they had been very heavy and very painful,
so for them to stop, in a very weird way, was quite nice.
But obviously the underlying problem was there still
and when it came to actually going onto the medication
that started my periods again,
I was very fortunate to get into a relationship
and he is now my husband and I now have two beautiful children.
So all in all it's fantastic
that the drugs can take that effect and can change your life.
It has changed my life completely.
