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PCOS

A Woman's Guide to Dealing With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

An Excerpt

By Colette Harris with Dr. Adam Carey

Helen, 28, for example, only ever had acne and depression, so was given antibiotics, told she was stressed out and then referred to a counselor for her depression:

The way my symptoms were looked at separately by my doctor meant that I never connected them together either. It was my mum who said that she sometimes got depressed before a period -- that got me wondering. I realized I'd always had a really long cycle of around 38 days, but had never told my doctor because it had always been like that. When I did tell him he started to think around the acne, blue moods and irregular periods, and diagnosed PCOS.

On the other hand, Amber, now 35, never had any symptoms to speak of but just found it hard to get pregnant:

We tried for four years before we managed to have Thomas with IVF treatment. It was only during a scan during the treatment that someone pointed out that I have PCOS. Had I known about it four years before, we could have saved a lot of heartache.

One in five women who has ultrasound scans during gynecological examinations show up polycystic ovaries. ¹ Of those who are found to have polycystic ovaries on ultrasound scan, more than 80 percent do in fact have one or more of the classic symptoms of PCOS, although they have not complained of these symptoms. ²