It all started when I didn’t get periods and so my GP referred me to the hospital. They did many tests, tried me on hormones and then settled on the contraceptive pill, to have a “fake period, because your body needs them.”
“Come back to us when you want to try for a baby,” were the words of a doctor to a 17 year old me. A baby? I was at college, a teenager, a teenager who had never even spoken to a boy, never mind spoken about a baby. I replied with, “OK” and then my case was closed to the NHS, with the advice to take the pill to have a menstrual cycle, which I did take, for a short period. Not knowing that this medicine was crucial for my body, not even knowing my diagnosis.
Fast forward to age 25, I was having a pre-op with a nurse because I was due to have my wisdom teeth out. She told me she had been on Google because she noticed I had a diagnosis that she had never heard of. I questioned this, she told me the name and I then looked up the symptoms myself. Why did the doctor just say to take the pill and didn’t even tell me what I have? A condition linked to genes. A condition for which I had all of the symptoms!
This hit me……I had already spent many years avoiding talk of periods with friends and struggling with symptoms older women had, such as mood swings and hot flushes. I didn’t want to enter into a serious relationship at the time, because what if they wanted children? I wasn’t ready to have that conversation when I didn’t even know what was going on with my own body. All of my friends were meeting their soulmate and talking of babies and I felt behind. Why was I left for so many years without answers?
Childless Life 
Leave a comment