I just spent nine hours in the ER on Saturday night because of severe abdominal pain and while I was getting an ultrasound, the tech asked if I'd ever been tested for PCOS

Funnily enough, despite living with painful heavy periods that lasted for a week if not longer since I was ten years old, no, I haven't.

Despite trying hormonal birth control and my periods only becoming worse, no, I haven't.

And the more things I learn about PCOS, I can't help but continue to question why none of my doctors have ever considered the possibility before, despite lifelong complaints.

(I know why, it's because I live in the south and, despite living in a major city before, it was not an especially progressive nor medically robust city. Now I live where there are nothing but incredibly well-equipped and well-educated medical facilities, and for the first time in mh life, my health issues are being believed.)

Anyway, the ER doctor referred me to an OB/GYN who will supposedly contact me about setting up an appointment sometime this week. Fingers crossed I get in soon, seeing as my pain is only continuing to get worse and Ibuprofen and Tylenol are only getting me so far.

Saw the ob/gyn,,, well, I guess not yesterday anymore but on Wednesday, marking it as exactly a week of this non-stop pain that I still struggle to describe

Despite my family history of severe menstrual problems, the doctor said that my pain was "too high up" in my abdomen to be from a ruptured cyst (even though when my girlfriend had one it was in the same spot 🤔)

She theorized that it was fibromyalgia pain, which is,,, interesting, considering I gave had fibro for over four years now and never been in pain like this or for this long, but prescribed me some additional birth control and muscle relaxers to see if that helped.

So far?

Nothing.

I'm still in pain, it fluctuates but it spikes higher and higher every day, I can barely do anything around the house, and I am just stuck waiting for the pain to stop on its own, I guess.

I take back what I said about the medical system here. It's not perfect, and I knew that before, but it's jarring to be failed like this in a time of need that even abled people would go to the hospital for.

(I wonder-- if I was abled, if I didn't already live with chronic pain and rate this pain as "barely above my normal" when it first started, would I have been listened to? If I had whined and moaned and begged the nurses at the ER like some patients do, would I have been taken more seriously? If I hadn't trained myself to remain calm and level-headed while in too much pain to function, all for the sake of making life easier on the abled people around me, would they have realized how much pain I'm in?)