PCOS, quit explaining everything weird about my life

(Originally posted July 29th, 2012)

I spent the entire week basically depressed and researching PCOS, and also carb-crashing and being all shakey and having major brain fog. But I walked 30-40 minutes every day except Wednesday, when I lifted cans for a half hour instead, and today in addition to walking I also did a 12 minute yoga video. We figured out a good walking route that is mostly in the shade (essential at this point in the summer in the south - by 8am it's blazing hot when you're in the sun) and takes us around 30-40 minutes to walk, and B has been walking with me most days.

B has been kinda awesome about this in general, he keeps making me all these crazy low carb recipes, he's been cooking 3 meals a day for me since I've been sitting home in a funk, and he walks with me with only minimal grumbling (and I grumble too). I love him. :)

Meanwhile, it's just getting bizzare and creepy at this point! Pretty much anything that has ever been weird about my body can be at least partially attributable for PCOS. Every day my mind is blown to another degree as yet another unexplained mysterious thing about my body turns out to be related.

Another thing attributable; I've always had really dark elbows and knuckles on my hands, like dark to the point where they look dirty (and my hands have knuckles like 5 shades darker than the rest of my fingers). This is why I don't wear rings other than my wedding ring and didn't mind not having an engagement ring- don't want to call too much attention to my hands cause they are weird colored looking, it always looks like I don't wash my hands enough or something.

For a year before my wedding I moisturized my elbows every day in an attempt to get them looking less dark (since I was going to wear a sleeveless dress), and at one point I read something about not having the right bacteria on your elbows to eat away the dead skin, so I made B rub elbows with me a bunch of times to try to transfer his elbow bacteria. I kid you not. Neither of these things helped of course.

Guess what explains it? Insulin resistance and a build up of insulin that pools in the folds of your skin, and causes excess skin buildup. Knuckles and elbows are specifically mentioned as a place this can happen (as are knees and ankles, but I don't have problems there except for the boney part that sticks out from my inner ankles being a bit darker) The same thing that caused the spots on my thigh (Which seem a bit lighter but that might just be wishful thinking) and the one on my hand that already disappeared.

Ok so the list of things weird about me, that are definitely or may be attributable to PCOS:

*Irregular period when not on birth control (this started at puberty, I never had a regular period, it always came every 5 to 8ish weeks before going on BC)
*elevated blood sugar
*high cholesterol
*"Manly" demeanor/personality, not being "girly" whatever that means according to other people (excess androgens).
*a few extra hairs on my chin/chest/belly and somewhat thinning hair (thankfully not yet to the point where it's embarrassing).  My haircut people are always giving me layered haircuts to disguise how thin my hair is
*the fact that I have always had a hard time losing and keeping off weight and am in the "Obese" category even though I have had a reasonable diet/regular exercise for years.
*disrupted sleep/being a light sleeper
*spots on my thigh and hand
*dark elbows and knuckles
*always having some acne on my chin/forehead and having a ton of bacne whenever I'm not on birth control pills, despite being 30 and firmly over my teenage years
*my anxiety issues are probably partially related too - at least as there is a correlation found in the literature although causality has not yet been established - and now that I think about it, the 3 people in my immediate family who have some similar symptoms to me anxiety-wise - me, my one brother, and my dad, are the same people who are pre-diabetic or have insulin issues (me and my dad) or diabetic (my brother)

That is also a list of pretty much everything that has ever been weird about my body. At least it doesn't seem like I have multiple problems other than PCOS, just a bunch of PCOS related symptoms.