“OMG GUYS… what if I’m pregnant?” she says to our group of friends, while we are sitting round the table in the living room, sipping at red wine.
Everyone giggles and makes jokes about raw sex and “buying her baby clothes”. Her Flo app just notified her that she’s one day late for her period — at most, two. I laugh along, I guess, only because I’m supposed to. Truth be told, I’ve never understood the fear of being pregnant due to a late period. And for many years, I thought it was totally normal to be delayed by a week, or a month, or even two months on the odd occasion.
I got my first period relatively late compared to my peers. I was 14 years old, which now that I’m older, doesn’t bother me. But at that age, it felt embarrassing. I had my first, and then didn’t have another for about a year. I thought the universe let me off easy. Maybe it was doing me a favour, some good karma from my past lives. It was only when it returned that I realised I didn’t have some higher power behind me on this one.
When I got my period again, it lasted two months. It was extremely heavy, to the point that leaking through my pad by 10am became part of my school routine. I would be constantly worried for the moment I stood up and checked the seat, in fear I would have left a mark. My tights would stay damp, and I would stay nauseous. By the end of that two month period, I was seriously unwell. Doctors checked me for anaemia, but found nothing in my blood tests. It wasn’t until my Mum noticed how irregular I was, and brought up a condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), that things started to make sense. Thank God she was a nurse!
I fell into full research mode. I came across a lot of information on how common the condition is, the lack of funding for research on women’s health issues, the ways PCOS can impact fertility, and so forth. I felt somewhat invalidated by the normalisation of the condition. Just get on with it, I would think to myself (and a lot of the time, still do). Other women have it worse. It was only when I had to call my Mum to rush me to hospital that I thought it might finally be taken seriously — and maybe I would take it seriously myself. After vomiting from the amount of abdominal pain I was in, they sent me away with ‘gastro’. When I had to go back for the second time — and almost a third — they gave me a slightly more creative answer. Gallstones! (Hint: it was not gallstones.)
Fortunately, there’s a way around it! Or, at least they say there is. Balance your hormones, work on your eating habits, exercise, and do all the other things doctors tell you when they don’t really know the answer. And if none of that works, book a $300 consultation with an endocrinologist or gynaecologist. They’ll probably send you for a few inconclusive $400 scans and blood tests, and then ask you back for a $250 follow-up consultation to be told they found ‘nothing unusual’. Too often, even with these specialists, a focus on fertility and reproductive health dominates the discussion. Not the fact that we’re in immense and chronic pain. The top priority is rarely to revitalise, and advocate for, our quality of life. A final option for you, if you can’t afford the heinously expensive specialist treatments, is to go for the cheaper option: birth control pills. Excitingly, there have been recent changes to a number of contraceptive pills becoming subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). However, the real, enduring cost is the constant guilt and feeling of failure fed to you by social media for using a “band-aid solution”.
Remember: it’s your fault you’re not going for the holistic approach, not the medical industry’s!
Growing up with PCOS has been a rollercoaster, and will probably continue to be for the rest of my menstruating life. The anxiety and fear of what is to come from my period is never-ending. My fears aren’t about my period being a tad late, or about getting blood on the white pants that I wanted to wear on the weekend. Nor are my fears about being pregnant, or having to run to Chemist Warehouse for the Plan B pill.
My fears are whether my next period will land me in hospital again. My fears are how much money I’m going to be out of pocket to just have a chat with my specialist. My fears are that I’ll never be able to have children due to the lack of research and support available to women. These are the fears of more than one in ten women in Australia.
She notices my boredom when I tell her, “it’ll be fine!”
I tell her that my period is two months late.
She asks me if I’ve taken a pregnancy test, and giggles. I look at her, and say, “there’s no need. Not for you, or for me.”
She tells me she was joking, but I notice her putting her wine to the side.
