The pearl necklace that changed my life

I'm sharing this Journey in my life to connect to other families who may face the same trials and triumphs in life as I do. Also, in hopes of helping those who don't understand these struggles from an outside view to see it from the inside. 

In 2009, I started to have a pain that I thought would just go away. But, I found myself laughing it off as I would joke to friends that when I sneezed it would hurt my ovaries. Everyone would laugh and in my head i'm thinking "no guys really". I finally went to my mom and expressed the concern I was starting to feel as the pain not only didn't go away, but continued to get WORSE! We agreed that it would be best to go in and get checked out. So, we booked an appointment and dreaded the wait to find out what was wrong. 

The day finally came, the day of my first appointment that changed my life. The doctor suggested that we do an ultrasound. In my young mind I was confused as to why we would do an ultrasound. Isn't that only if you're pregnant? Then on that little screen showed my first friend. A large cyst. The doctor explained how many women get cysts! A lot of women don't even know that they have them because they pass with your menstrual cycles. Which lead to another problem. I never had a normal cycle, which we always associated with me being very active in sports. So the three of us decided that our next step is birth control. It made sense at the time, if I got on birth control and had regular cycles my cyst will go away. 

About a month later we go into my next appointment hoping that the cyst had at least shrunk in size. Here we go, another ultrasound. My little friend showed up on the screen once again, but this time it brought two more friends. And, it had gotten BIGGER! We continued with birth control for the next year or so. Over that time I had tried 11 different birth controls. None of them were decreasing the size in my 3 cysts. They had continued to grow and grow. I had reactions to many of the pills, the patch, and the nuva ring. NOTHING was working! My first and biggest cyst had grown to a questionable size and the doctor discussed with my mom and I that we needed to take the cyst out before it could cause any damage. So surgery was scheduled a few months out.

Two weeks after my successful surgery we went in for my routine Post Op. The first thing the doctor said was "you are one of my weirdest patients. I almost left your cyst in because the covering made it look like a third ovary!" She told me how my ovaries looked pink and healthy. In that moment I felt normal again, I had all the confidence in the world. I walked into the room for my post op ultrasound expecting nothing but good news. Unfortunately that was not exactly the way it went for me.

I looked up at the little screen, and my friend was gone! I was so excited. But, the look on the ultrasound techs face told me otherwise. He focused in on my ovary and said, "do you see how this looks like a pearl necklace? We need to have the doctor look at these before you go". I sat and waited and waited for the doctor to come back in and discuss the results. There had to be some sort of mistake right?? She just said they were healthy. The door opens, and she explains to me something called Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. That was the name of my pearl necklace.