Hi, I'm HD.

Hi, I'm HD. I am a 36 year old married woman with a PCOS, or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a health problem where the woman’s hormone (endocrine) system is out of balance. I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was 16 years old after many visits to many different doctors. My symptoms were facial hair due to high levels of male hormones (the boys were jealous of my mustache, so teased me much and often), and irregular, painful periods. Most doctors told me just to shave and that there was nothing wrong with me. Finally, an endocrinologist did a pelvic ultrasound and found lots of cysts in my ovaries. He put me on birth control pills which helped with my periods. I also had electrolysis for my mustache.

As I got older, my symptoms grew to include hair loss, acne, skin tags, high cholesterol, and weight gain. I eventually found an Endocrinologist who was very helpful, listening to my issues; she eventually took me off of the birth control pills and put me on several other drugs usually used for diabetes. She also diagnosed me with Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune thyroid disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. Once I started taking the new drugs, my hair stopped falling out, the acne is almost completely gone, I lost the extra weight, and my cholesterol is back where it should be. When I turned 33, my husband and I decided to stop using any kind of birth control. Infertility is defined in specific terms as the failure to conceive after a year of regular intercourse without contraception, so I guess infertility is now another of my PCOS symptoms. At 36 years old, we are at the now-or-never point in my life as it pertains to infertility. We’ve waited as long as we have because of some outstanding debt that we have tamed but not yet killed. This is the story of our struggle to have a child without incurring any more debt.