What's wrong with me?

 I can't remember a time in my life where I felt like a normal girl or young woman.  My period has never been regular. When it first started, sure.. it's normal not to be regular. But that regularity of a monthly period never came. The most regular I ever managed to be was 6 periods a year. About once every two months. I always knew this wasn't right. I saw a doctor when I was about 15 or 16 with my mother and we were told that it was completely normal not to have a regular period for the first few years after getting your period. Life went on. At 18, still knowing something was 'wrong' with me, I battled with the need for getting a pap. I researched it online and decided I was too scared to find an answer to my problems. Was it cancer? My grandmother died of ovarian cancer. I didn't like any of the plausible options I could come up with in my 18 year old head, so I made the decision never to get one.

Finally, at age 26--I had my first pap smear. What had finally spurred my butt into gear was that I had just recently been married and the subject of our eventual offspring came up. Before we even started actively trying to conceive, I knew what I had to do. My Dr said that they would call me in a few days if something came back abnormal. Those were the longest few days of my life. I received a letter in the mail from my Dr's office saying that my results came back completely normal, and to call for another appointment, same time next year. A sigh of relief. I was fine then, right? At this point, I was so uneducated in the field of  female reproduction, I had no idea this was just the first step to many others I would soon have to take.

Now came the next hurdle. I always had this gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was going to have difficulty getting pregnant. As I got older, that feeling turned to a certainty that I would never be able to become pregnant. I wasn't even entirely sure why. I knew periods should be normal in a healthy woman, but I had no idea you could still ovulate in the absence of your period, that there were drugs to help you menstruate/ovulate.

Still knowing something was amiss, I turned to the internet. Wow! Why hadn't I done this sooner? Oh yes, that's right.. I was scared to death of what I may find.  Now that I was thinking not only about myself but my new husband, our furbaby Pavi and prospective mini-Garcia's--well now that changed everything.  I needed to find out what was wrong and fix it as soon as humanly possible. This led me to (among other things: many other things) PCOS. I started scrolling through symptoms and darn near swore out loud when I came across the myriad of things that were related to PCOS. No, not just infertility and menstrual irregularities.  Seemingly unrelated things. Weight gain, predominately around your midsection. Check. Irritability and severe mood swings. Check. Hirsuitism. Wait.. I always thought that was because my father was Arabic and it was a dark skinned thing? Check, check. And, as I would later learn, a whole slew of other blood work related things that attributed to my difficulty in losing and maintaining my weight my whole life.

I continued on and became quite the avid internet article reader.  At this point, I knew I needed to see a Dr. A specialist. Someone who could really help me sort through this..