I'm not ready to have children yet.... well, actually that's not true. I've been ready since I was 16. So, let me rephrase. My relationship and my financial situation is not quite ready. But it's wayyyyyyyyyy up there on my agenda. It's something I want to seriously start thinking about, like, yesterday.
Sat here approaching my 29th birthday in a few months, weighing 121kgs (the same weight I've been for the last 8 years or so give or take a few kilos), I just wish I hadn't burried my head in the sand for as long as I have.
I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in late 2005. In early 2006 I was having an internal ultrasound to determine if I had any cysts on my ovaries as part of my diagnosis. A minute or so in, with my legs spread wide and feeling rather vulnerable, the sonographer - a
Sonographer: "Oh, hmm... ok, that's weird. I've not seen that before."
Me: (veryyyyy concerned) "what? what haven't you seen before, what's weird? Is everything ok?"
Sonographer: "Just give me a minute, I need to try and understand what I'm looking at here."
Me: "oh... god... errrr, ok"
I mean, what choice did I have? The balance of power clearly lay in her gloved hands.
What seems like hours passed...
Sonographer: "I'll be a back in a minute, I just need to go and get a colleague to take a look at this with me. Don't move please."
Fuck.
She comes back with her colleague. They take a look together and then reach for the shelves and pull of a binder. They start flipping through the pages, pointing at pictures and pointing at the ultrasound screen. They were trying to match up my uterus! Oh crap!
Finally, the colleague leaves. I ask the sonographer to please explain what's going on. I can't handle much more of the suspense.
Sonographer: "Do you have two periods a month?"
Me: (what the hell??) "Umm, no. Why?"
Sonographer: "Are you periods extremely heavy and painful?"
Me: "No, when I get a period (about 4 times a year) its quite light and pain free. Please, tell me what is going on."
Sonographer: "Well, it appears like you have two uteruses."
Me: "Excuse me? Two what? Is that even possible?!?!"
Turns out, it not only is possible to have two uteruses, but also two vaginas and two cervixes as well. Who knew?? I certainly didn't. She booked me an appointment to see the consultant again. I went through a few more ultrasounds, 3D and 4D, and was diagnosed with a septate uterus. Not two uteruses at all, but rather one uterus that has a dividing wall of sorts splitting it into two cavities. I can have a very simple operation to remove this, a hysteroscopy, but was told to go away and lose weight before it could be done.
If I don't have this operation, my chances of having a miscarriage are approximately 50% and if I did manage to carry a pregnancy my risk of pre-term labour are off the chart. So, I need to have this operation if I ever want to have a baby of my own.
Life got in the way and here I am about three years later still needing to lose weight to have the operation. Losing weight would also helped with the bad back I have as a result of a slipped disc caused by an assault two years ago and also with my symptoms of PCOS. So why haven't I taken the bull by the horns years ago? I dunno. Life, laziness and fear I guess. Fear that even if I lose weight I still won't be able to have my own family.
Enough of the psycho-analysis.
I'm angry! Through my work, I was speaking with a top fertility specialist in the UK and he recommended me to a particular fertility surgeon in London to do the surgery. He said that because its a relative simple procedure, that the consultant telling me to lose weight first was bollocks. A brush off. Fat people get brushed off by doctors all the freakin' time; doctors who rely on a bullshit BMI system to calculate someones health. It's bollocks.
So, with renewed hope I went along to my GP and got a referral for said specialist. I waited for my appointment which came through after six weeks. I went along only to see somebody in the wrong department because my GP had got the referral wrong. The registrar I saw made me another appointment for a months time to see the consultant I should have seen in the first place.
I went to that appointment on the 11th of December and the consultant wasn't there, I saw one of his colleagues instead. After asking me whether I smoke (no), drink (no), have any heart problems (no) he said, incredibly awkwardly, that I would need to get my BMI down to under 30 before I will be considered for the elective procedure.
I didn't elect to have a uterus abnormality that requires me to have surgery before I can have a baby. That was not something I chose! I've done my research. As far as procedure's go, it's a fairly simple one that would be over in less than 20 minutes.
I was dismissed from the clinic and driven into the depths of despair for the next week.
So, now here I am. 28.7 years old. I need to lose approx. 30kgs ASAP so I can have the hysterscopy and start thinking about having a family. As it is, having PCOS is going to make it incredibly hard for me to lose weight. If it takes me a year to lose the weight, that makes me almost 30. It can literally take years for someone with PCOS to conceive, even with fertility treatment.
Tick, tick, tick tick
I need to get started!
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