hey :)

This is a rant - mostly because I feel so alone in what feels like a struggle uphill with pcos - and mostly because I have kept this in for so long that I'm about to burst at the seems - and also because I want to hear about your stories too so that I don't feel alone. I've lurked here for a little while and you seem like good people :)

Although being diagnosed just one month ago, I look back and realise that I've had this for years.

The rapid weight gain, the hair loss, the hair where I don't want it, the acne and everything else horrible that goes with the syndrome. I have it - I live with it, like you guys.

As soon as I found out, I started a low carb diet - atkins - because I realised that my weight problem is a difficult one, because most pcos sufferers have to deal with the horrible weight as well as the problem of it not coming off in a world where being thin is becoming increasingly important (as vile as that is). I'm happy to be on a diet, to struggle to see results - but unfortunately I don't see any results. One month of strict diet and exercise and I have only seen very very little of my weight come off, perhaps only a couple of kilos. I can't tell you how discouraging this is as I'm begining to think that this weight I was told to get rid of by my doctor is probably not going to come off, no matter how hard I try.

I look around me and read the stories of other women like me who have been on the weight rollercoaster for years and realise that the pcos woman who has her weight under control is close to a myth. I'm yet to come across one who started off heavy and is now compleately in the normal weight range AND has kept it off in what seems like forever. It makes me really sad and discouraged.

I recently started metformin - but am only on 500mg a day at the moment, while I wait for my body to get used to the side effects. Hopefully I'll work my way up to 1500mg within a month or so and be on my way to some semblence of normality. But even that path is wrought with peril - the side effects and the feeling like if I go off it, things will balloon backwards like a vacume that blows instead of sucks.

I know it's hard for everyone, and I feel for everyone and perhaps I'm a little depressed at the moment because I've just been told by my mother that "this problem" is "all in my mind" and that just eating less will make it all go away (even after explaining the situation and giving her literature). Although I'm 25, I feel about 13 when I hear this. I have very little to no support to see me through this horror, even my doctor has implied how easy things would be if I lost weight (though it seems to me that if losing weight were so easy then I would have done it a million years ago). I just feel so unbelievably alone and scared for the future. Some friends have sympathised with me but noone really understands how horrible it is, and just how far reaching these symptoms are.

I feel like moving away and living by myself on a rock somewhere - because the world is just too scary right now.

Does anyone else feel like this sometimes?
Has anyone had any real success with dealing with those outward symptoms of pcos?
What is your story?