Friday, February 15, 2008

Not PCOS

Well, the blood tests revealed that I don't have PCOS. For several years now I was pretty sure I had PCOS, and the doc seemed pretty sure as I had so many symptoms, but it turns out that most of my hormones are pretty close the normal. The only one that is out of whack is testosterone.

So I have high testosterone levels. The normal range for a woman is 25-75. (Please don't ask me what the units are because I simply don't know.) Doc said she almost never sees higher than 50. I'm at 100. This is not disastrously high. If it were 200, she's send me for a CAT scan to see if a tumor was causing overproduction. So hey, that's good news -- no CAT scan.

So what to do? She recommends a high-protein diet. I guess protein binds with testosterone, which makes it less effective. She prescribed metformin to regulate my blood sugar and help me lose weight. And she prescribed the pill -- as in The Pill, birth control.

What? Birth control when I'm trying to get pregnant? Yup. If I want to get pregnant ASAP, she recommends two months on the pill to "reset" my cycle followed by Clomid to trigger ovulation. This is my best shot to conceive quickly.

I can also try two months on the pill followed by no Clomid to see if that works. This appeals to me as Clomid has a 1% chance of twins. Not interested in twins, thank you.

And finally, another option is to try the pill for two months and then continue for even longer if I'd like to try to lose more weight before getting pregnant. I did have some problems related to my weight during the last pregnancy, and because I'm only 33, Doc feels I still have some time before conceiving could become truly elusive.

Not sure what we're going to do.

6 comments:

Danielle/Brooke said...

I just saw your post of your other site regarding this. Metformin is actually how you treat PCOS. Since you can only treat the sympton anyway not the disease. What dosage does your doctor have you on. this might be the only thing you will need to get pregnant. However, if you do actually have PCOS, which I think you do (but I am not a doctor)the clomid might be needed. I thankfully did not. We did three cycles of Metformin and then we had planned to start the clomid since 90% of the time people with PCOS need that boost to get the ovaries working right but surprise, surprise I got pregnant!!

Kathy V said...

I saw a comment you left on One Dink's blog. I was not a big fan of clomid. Clomid made me very dry and gave me ovarian cysts. But it DID jump start my system into ovulation. So now I am not taking clomid and am ovulating on my own. Hope it works for you!

Ellen said...

Best wishes Jessica! Would love to see you have a little Squirt to go with your Bean. It can be a long and winding road to conceive... doesn't always have the happy ending we desire (for example: me. alas)... but in your case I will be praying along with you that God will bless you with your heart's desires!

Jessica said...

What the heck. More comments that I never even knew about. I'm going to turn on comment notification. Grrr. Sorry to have ignored everyone. It was unintentional.

Danielle, regarding Metformin: I had a terrible time with the regular stuff (I'm sensitive and have a bunch of uncomfortable side effects), so I asked her to prescribe the extended-release version of it, which I was able to tolerate in the past. But I haven't even started taking it. I have no idea what happened to my bottle of pills. It's embarrassing to admit that I'm too disorganized and distracted to begin taking a medication that has been prescribed. Could I be having emotional issues? (Not really sure if I'm ready for a second baby, so maybe I'm subconsciously sabotaging? Sounds like a separate post to me!)

Kathy, thanks for the info. It's always nice to hear about real experiences.

Ellen, thanks for the well wishes.

Anonymous said...

Metforminfor PCOS may have other benefits as well. It helps to lower testosterone levels, which reduces the excess body hair that women with PCOS have, although it may take several months to see results

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