Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Oh hello 5 am (Originally posted July 21 2012)

Did you ever break up with someone, and then the next morning, wake up at like 5am thinking everything is ok at first, but then it hits you that you broke up with that person? And once that hits you, you are done with sleep for the day and just lie there being depressed for a few hours not able to fall back asleep?

Yeah this morning was like that, only instead of breaking up with someone, I might be infertile, and even if I'm not, will very likely have a hard time getting and staying pregnant.

Last night I talked to a friend with PCOS and 3 kids who told me all sorts of fun things that clomid could do. Like the way the first time she took it, when she ovulated it was so painful she ended up going to the ER. Lovely.

Also made the mistake of looking up information about PCOS, which I shouldn't, cause there just isn't anything I can do about it. But did you know people with PCOS have a 45% chance of miscarriage? Even better!

If in the end it comes down to things like surgery and having to inject myself with daily things and multiple miscarriages, I don't know if I could do that. If it comes down to that I might just not have kids, or adopt.

Also in reading I discovered that one of the symptoms is unusual discolorations around the groin/armpit area, which I totally have, so that's another weird thing explained (I have a few weird discolored spots on my thigh, and I was like "Wtf are these? am I getting skin cancer or liver spots or something?").

It would also explain why I have always had so much trouble losing weight and am always overweight even though I eat very healthily for the most part (like chicken and brown or wild rice for dinner/ egg whites and turkey sausage on whole wheat for breakfast is my standard fare- I don't live on chips and ice cream). I don't eat too much, and I'm fairly active (I don't jog every day or anything, but I walk my dogs once or twice a week, garden and pull weeds every day, gem mining once a month, etc,) but I'm still 213 pounds and 5 foot 7 which makes me "obese". Kinda makes me super pissed at my mom for all the times she harped on me about my weight, and all the borderline eating disorders and super low self esteem about my body that I had for years as a result- cause now the fact that I could never lose weight actually has an explanation, other than my mom's (and apparently my doctor's) explanation of me stuffing my face, which I just don't do.

I'm also pissed at my mom in general because we've partially reconciled but not enough that I feel comfortable talking to her about having PCOS, because then I would have to tell her we are trying to have kids, and I don't want to have to deal with any potential drama or even just her not being happy about me having kids. And I highly suspect she might not be as happy as I would want her to be, since that would tie me to B forever and will lead to more drama when things like "I'm not circumcising any sons I have" comes up. Which is just a shitty situation in general. I feel closer to my blog friends than to my mother, and this is making me feel momless again like I did when I didn't talk to her at all for 4 years.

This is probably just anger displacement though. I can't be angry at my body but I can still be angry at my mom!

Also, from a gender perspective, this whole thing is a giant mindfuck for me right now. I spent the past decade studying gender, and arguing with people who say there are biological gender differences by gender, saying they are minimal at best, and one of my arguments was "I don't [insert stereotypical female behavior], and ain't I a woman?" I also went through a period in college where I questioned whether I was transgendered to some degree, because throughout my life I've been called "Manly" told I "wear the pants in my relationships" etc. Even as a teenager, I always got along better with men than with women (I was frequently the only woman in a room full of dudes), and most of my best friends are men. Only to find that I probably have a disorder that leads to an unusually high amount of androgyns or "male hormones". That doesn't mean that the majority of gender roles aren't social rather than biological, but it's still..i don't know how to process that. I guess me as a woman having an unusually high amount of androgyns shows there is biological diversity in women too...I should go discuss this with my old feminist theory prof/mentor who I recall was working on a paper trying to prove hormones didn't matter, but couldn't, because they did. But yeah. I'm glad I switched over to more family/sex research instead of just research on gender (Which I started out doing), cause this whole thing makes me question a lot of things I thought were true about gender.

I don't think "half an hour of intense exercise" every day is going to happen, but half an hour of walking with my dog to the point it makes me sweat is very doable. So yesterday me and B walked around 45 minutes to the park, and this morning I walked to the park again with just Max and figured out that if I'm with Max (as opposed to Max + Barkley, who is slow as hell and likes to stop and smell every bush that we pass) I can do a park loop in half an hour that's really pretty pleasant. So I did that this morning too. And then I took Barkley out on a walk around the small loop in my neighborhood (we have a big one and a small one), which was another 15 minute walk, just cause when I got home with Max he looked so sad that he didn't get to go on a walk with us. Plus walking is fun.

7 comments:

  1. This is all so hard. I'm so sorry. And I, too, am hoping for a happy ending for it all. They can do amazing things these days and it may not be as horrible and difficult for you as it is for some. You know?
    But here's something else I wanted to say- the older I get, the more I am convinced that hormones and genes are responsible for FAR MORE than we even know. Hormones are powerful drugs. POWERFUL. They affect us profoundly, both physically and mentally. Probably far more than we'd care to admit, thinking we, as human beings, have free will and all of that fancy mind-stuff. Which we do, of course, but to a degree. And genes- well, that goes without saying.
    Of course, this is a very subjective observation. But until someone proves me otherwise, I'm sticking with it.

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  3. Questioning long-held assumptions can be painful and confusing, but it's ultimately a good, healthy and necessary process.

    Of course hormones (and other biological factors, such as genetics) play a role in our lives. The flaw with classic gender stereotypes is that they tend to assume a gender binary - you are either all female, or all male, and completely different traits are assigned to each category. In reality, hormone levels vary from person to person. Women also have a certain amount of testosterone, and men have a small amount of female hormones such as prolactin as well.

    I remember that one of the themes in my Law, Gender, Equality course was the issue of seeing equality as merely sameness, or of ensuring that difference did not lead to discrimination.

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  4. Try to avoid the internet for getting medical information. I've scared myself silly a couple of times.

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  5. I actually found it interesting and kinda empowering...there have been all these weird things wrong with my body for years, and now all of them have an explanation- and once I started low carbing, most of my issues started resolving themselves, which is awesome.

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  6. I'm a nurse and I've cared for plenty of women with PCOS who had healthy babies. Hope this is encouraging.
    Also I doubt it started when you were just a teenager. So you can't blame your androgens for that.

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