A Bumpy Ride

“Basically, it’s a bit of a bummer,” Veronique told me two years ago. This talented interior designer was making light of the fact she has polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

Of course, I wouldn’t have known her ovaries were home to tiny fluid filled cysts unless she’d told me. But her shiny, spotty skin and overweight body were classic giveaways.

“I stopped having proper periods years ago,” Veronique went on. “I have a heavy one, and then nothing for maybe four months. And I get big black hairs on my neck and chin, which I have to pull out.” She looked sad. “Sometimes I think it’s ruining my life. I’ve hired escorts to take me to parties, because I’m sick of people asking if I have a boyfriend. Actually, I’ve never had one.”

A woman, or sometimes a girl (it often starts in adolescence) is labeled as having PCOS when a scan reveals swollen follicles on her ovaries, and a blood test shows peculiar hormone levels. There’s a selection of symptoms too—typically an unkind pick and mix of irregular periods (or no periods at all), acne, weight gain, depression, and infertility.

“You see, it’s all good news,” Veronique quipped sarcastically.

So far experts have established that PCOS—which affects up to one in ten women of childbearing age in vastly varying degrees and different ways—is triggered by imbalances in the hormones controlling the menstrual cycle, of which there are more than a few. There are hormones produced by the ovaries, namely estrogens, progesterone, and adrogens (of which testosterone is the biggie). Plus there are the two hormones that regulate them, produced in the brain by the pituitary gland—FSH (which stands for follicle stimulating hormone) and LH (luteinising hormone).

But the precise cause of this chemical mayhem? So far, no one can say.

“For years doctors didn’t bother to find out why I was fat,” Rosemary explains. “They just assumed it was my fault.”

Rosemary’s periods were troublesome almost from the day they started when she was fourteen. And they were astoundingly heavy. “I was just a kid and assumed everyone bled that way,” she says.