I talk often about my chronic health conditions as well as chronic pain from some injuries I sustained from a car accident and also arthritis and degenerative disc disease in my back. Something I don’t talk about much (anymore) is also that I also have PCOS. This was something that went undiagnosed for most of my life as there was not even a word for these issues when I was growing up. It’s a really awful diagnosis and it pretty much means you suffer a variety of problems …
In my early social media days especially back on G+ I used to talk about my struggles with PCOS a lot. I had been newly diagnosed around that time and I was just so frustrated with the lack of information, specialists, and general ignorance that surrounded almost every woman’s health issue. It is different from woman to woman sometimes but the amount of suffering and struggle women with PCOS deal with is pretty horrendous and many people are unfamiliar with it entirely even now.
I remember back in the day Sasha Pieterse of Pretty Little Liars had come out publicly to talk about the massive weight gain she experienced due to PCOS and how that affected her role as the very thin and glamourous character on the show. PCOS makes it nearly impossible to lose weight no matter what you do coupled with metabolic issues. Some women with PCOS can’t GAIN weight, others can’t lose. You can work your ass off forever and very little changes with your body.
With PCOS ovaries produce an abnormal amount of androgens (male sex hormones) and this causes a variety of issues in a woman’s body including hair growth on the face (I can grow a full beard faster than my brother if I don’t shave daily) and also ovarian cysts of which I had so many (some burst and landed me in the hospital) that I eventually had a hysterectomy because of the constant pain I was in.
PCOS is a shitty life sentence for which there is no cure, just drugs for symptom maintenance.
Another common feature of PCOS with the weight gain I mentioned is that it almost only occurs around the belly and abdomen so sometimes you’ll see these kind of apple shaped women … small arms, small lets, small everything but around the center is a lot of weight. That is sometimes a very clear sign of PCOS – not always – but it’s a super common way that some gynecologists will begin to speculate along with a host of other symptoms that may present on a metabolic level.
Point being … PCOS is just one of MANY issues that women face that change their body and how it functions and it’s out of their control and there is very little that can be done aside from managing symptoms and struggling for years and years with it. It’s important for people to have a level of education about things instead of judging women who may be larger or may have extra hair on their face or other type of issues (including more masculine features) from hormone imbalances.
One of the symptoms of PCOS is hirsutism … excessive hair growth on the face, chest, and back … male-like patterns of growth basically from the androgens. I only have facial hair but it’s pretty extreme. If I don’t shave daily … it’s really noticeable. My insurance doesn’t cover anything like laser hair removal or anything like that. There are meds to help with it, but it’s considered purely cosmetic and therefore not a medical necessity, so they’re not covered either.
Gah … I’m bring this whole PCOS thing up today because one of my TODOs today is to do my facial regiment which is really extensive and not in the kind of typical female way for looking good and looking young kind of thing. No mine is about dealing with common issues that many Black men do from shaving such as razor bumps because of how African American hair grows back in on itself if you don’t shave properly. Deep cleaning. Exfoliating like crazy. Covering old scars from bad razors etc.
My tribemates always tell me to just let the beard grow … I consider myself MoC (Masculine of Center) anyway but walking around with a full beard is just not something I’m comfortable with doing. It doesn’t even grow in well … I’d have to tame the shit out of it considering I’ve been shaving with no care about that for decades. I’d love to be someone who could just do that, walk around with a beard but … not in this day and age … not in this world we live in.
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