Comfort in my Strangeness

My husband and I have officially started our oplan:buntis project and the “new” initial diagnosis for my reproductive condition was PCOS or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. I’ve done my homework on this topic. I have scoured the internet for case studies, scientific references, etc… Surprisingly, this week alone I learned that I actually have three friends who have the same syndrome. Now just when you think I’d feel much better because I would have some fellow fertility-challenged females to share this with, I felt otherwise.

Suddenly, I am beginning to suspect that I may not just have PCOS. If it was THIS common that it could actually happen to three other women who are close to me, somehow I just CAN’T accept it.

Let me explain why I feel this way and maybe you can counsel me afterwards since I really do need some wisdom and encouragement right now…

You know all my life I have never felt COMMON. I have always felt ODD… always the different one in the crowd. Growing up (funny how I have never ever become comfortable with that term) I always felt that I didn’t belong because of my height. Somehow I knew that there must be a good reason why I was this short. As you can assess by now, this has been the root of all my deep-seeded angst.

So finally when I had the chance to seek medical answers to my bizarre condition I became obsessed. I started seeing my endocrinologist in 1996. I went through countless tests on my hormones… cortisol, estradiol, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin, thyroid stimulating hormones, human growth hormones (HGH)… even karyotyping to check if I had chromosomal defects… I had sonograms in various methods, MRIs, X-rays…Take note that I just didn’t have these tests one time – they were done several times. I was practically like a guinea pig coming in and out of the genetics laboratory of the PGH and St. Luke’s Hospital and sometimes at Cardinal Santos.

Those years were so depressing and really made me more nuts. Imagine that I was undergoing all these check-ups ALONE here in Manila. I didn’t have my family by my side. I was so depressed that I had to see a psychiatrist. Not only were there a lot of really big MISDIAGNOSES from results like Infantile Uterus to Uterine Agenesis (the absence of the uterus itself), my doctors (I was referred to several other specialists) weren’t really able to come up with a conclusion as to why I was SHORT with all of these reproductive challenges. How do you think a girl would feel if she was told that she didn’t have a uterus at all? Then only to find out later on through another doctor that there is a uterus, however it’s just small. Did I deserve to go through that kind of trauma?

Last year, another OB-GYN told me that I had Primary Ovarian Failure then she already suggested taking the Egg Donor option. Then this time around it’s Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. You see now why I hate going to the doctors? They make me crazy with all of their medical GUESSES!

In short, I have never found the final answer to my question in the first place. So because I got so tired going to doctors, who never can’t seem to just tell me what kind of a freak of nature I am, I just got my pills prescription to regulate my menstrual cycle and went on for several years not visiting anyone of them. All I wanted to know was WHY… I was willing to accept any syndrome or condition as long as it’s textbook. Is it Cushing’s Syndrome? One of those Thyroid syndromes? Heck, at that time I was even telling God, why didn’t He just give me Down’s Syndrome so it would be downright OBVIOUS. I was that DESPERATE and totally out of my wits.

It was so hard to go on living not knowing what was wrong with me while people kept on staring and asking me the same question that I also have in my head. Whenever people asked me about my diminutive stature, I always wished that I could give them a NAME for my condition but unfortunately my symptoms didn’t fall under any medical textbook category. It was tough to be different… to be mocked at… to be talked about… to be stared at… Not knowing what to do with my oddity, I decided to take COMFORT in my STRANGENESS. All these years I have used it as a weapon… and ironically as a “security blanket”. I was set on living my life DIFFERENTLY. Hence, the thought of getting married, raising a family, and all those suburban stereotypes didn’t occur to me until I finally got hitched. I felt so weird about myself that I honestly didn’t expect someone would actually fall in love with me and would be able to love me JUST THE WAY I AM!

That’s why now I’m trudging back to the place that I hate most – hospital laboratories! Ugh! But I have to because I want to give my husband a baby. Even if he tells me that it doesn’t necessarily complete our family, I want to do this for him, if not for myself.

Now back to my new diagnosis which is PCOS. Like I said earlier I feel weird that for the first time ever I am but one among many others. After how many years of having an “undefined” condition, I am suddenly a common case?!? Really now. I absolutely don’t know how to feel about it. I feel so uncomfortable with the thought that solutions and answers are actually right there for the picking. From being told that conceiving would be impossible (circa late 90s) to having the option of taking fertility treatments. Whatever happened to the “UNIQUE” me? Is this true? Now do you see why these are all too bizarre for me?

All these years I was already comfortable in my strangeness; that nobody else had this condition but me. I already owned it. I just can’t be like everybody else now. They all looked normal and had normal lives in the first place before they found out about their condition. So saying that I have the same condition and yet I had a far more torturous experience compared to them is simply unacceptable for me at the moment. You know what I mean? If we have the same reproductive condition then Lord why did you have to make me physically different? You know these three other girls who also have PCOS, they’re all tall good-looking girls who I’m pretty sure didn’t get to be the butt of jokes ever.

As I am writing this piece, I can’t help but shed tears of ambivalence… On one hand I feel happy that for the first time I ACTUALLY HAVE A COMMON DYSFUNCTION which makes me feel NORMAL or GENERIC -- the one thing that I have always wanted to be. I have always wanted to be among the crowd. Nothing odd. Nothing to pique the interest of people. And yet on the other hand I feel ANXIOUS that now that I am a COMMON CASE, then there would be MORE EXPECTATIONS – from other people and worse from myself.

Aaagghh!!! I’m really going ballistic over this. It’s ironically funny how I have learned to feel more normal being abnormal. Call me crazy. Sigh… tell me what you think…