I would like to have a minute of your time. I want to introduce you to my life with PCOS.




It started when I was in my early 30’s. Shortly after the surprise birth of my daughter, I started noticing clumps of hair loss as I washed my hair. The hair loss was to the point of a receding hairline and the growth of hair on my face and chest. It was humiliating and aside from having periods for months on end or none at all for months, it was the worst part of having pcos. The weight gain was something I dealt with since I was a kid. Seems like my whole life I’ve struggled with my weight, but I was always very active. I played sports and worked. But as I’ve gotten older, especially in the past two years, my life with PCOS has changed drastically. I developed anxiety and dealt with depression during my first marriage. The weight issues, hair loss and hair growth in unwanted places affected my life and how I felt about myself. The only thing that kept me going was and is my daughter. After my divorce I had lost over 120 pounds and was feeling the best I had in a long time. But the insomnia started. I barely slept four hours every night but it didn’t seem to bother me at first, but my hair loss worsened. And so did the hair growth and then came the weight gain in the past two years. No matter what I ate or how I dieted I would just gain the weight.

When I met my current husband in 2018 I was gaining weight but had seemed to conquer my depression. Still have high anxiety but the depression seemed to subside. I managed to find a way to make the best of my life with pcos until it started to make me feel different. I noticed the significant weight gain and tried dieting again. Strict. 1200 calories. I started talking to my current physician more about the truth of how I was feeling. Having hit my 40’s things seemed to change a lot. As he listened things started to make sense. The high blood pressure. Shortness of breath. Suddenly being exhausted around the clock. My insomnia went away and now I could hardly stay awake at all. That was a year ago.




This year, After the doctor prescribed weight loss medication due to the fact I went from 270 pounds to 301 in just a few short months. Good news is in two weeks I lost 13 pounds. And felt like things were going to start getting better. But on the third and fourth week after spending 200.00 on a prescription, I gained back the 13 pounds plus a few extra.




When I was able to go back to the doctors and discuss this, he asked about my panic attacks at night. Waking up gasping for air. Being tired all day long. Falling asleep any chance I could. So he called for me to have a sleep study. He also gave me a referral to the bariatric center for weight loss. My body isn’t responding to any weight loss medication or diets. I’ve tried Keto, I’ve cut sugar and soda and lowered my calories. I’ve cut carbs. I’ve tried eating just fruits and salads. I even spent close to $600 on Xingular to help me lose weight. All diets and plans that worked for everyone around me but doesn’t work for me. I keep track of my food and water intake on the MyFitnessPal app. But the PCOS is not letting my metabolism respond to weight loss. It’s signaling to my body to store the fat. I have consistent high blood pressure and have been diagnosed with Severe Obstructive Sleep Disorder and Day Time Sleep Disorder. I have frequent headaches and shortness of breath. I get heart palpitations. My recent sleep diagnosis is that I stop breathing 81 times per hour. Lowering oxygen to my brain and heart. The severity of my health issues could lead to stroke or heart attack, aneurism, heart disease, diabetes and a long list of other circumstances that are the result of Polycystic Ovarian related Obesity.




The best part is, all of this can be treated by my doctors who have been doing their best to make sure that as young as I am, I can live my best life. However, my health insurance provider doesn’t deem any of these issues medically necessary. They don’t recognize the issues I’m having as something my policy covers. To my healthcare provider, my obesity is a choice not a disease. I find it strange and sad that I pay each week for insurance for my health and my health is at a great risk and yet my policy doesn’t cover it. When I called to argue the point, they said my situation is cosmetic. I have three health care physicians that all agree the PCOS is complicating my health issues and making them worse. Now see, I can live with the hair loss because I buy wigs when I want to have nice hair. And I pluck and tweeze and wax the unwanted hair. If I wanted laser hair treatment, THAT would be cosmetic. But see, I’ve dealt with the depression caused by the hair loss and the growth of hair in places normal women don’t have to deal with. Because insurance doesn’t care how I feel about the hair loss or the growth. The best part is, my insurance isn’t concerned with the constant high blood pressure or my lack of oxygen with my sleep disorders that can result in stroke and heart attack.




Below are some pieces of various articles to inform you documents that prove how severe my health issues are and why I need to push forward for the weight loss sleeve surgery. I’m only 41 and I have a teenage daughter. My overall health is important. My PCOS related obesity is NOT my choice and shouldn’t be considered a cosmetic issue. So I need your help as I am raising money for the sleeve surgery. I have to pay out of pocket for the procedure. The insurance company has denied the medical necessity order from the doctors and my appeal to their decision.




If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.




Thank you for any and all donations

Sincerely

Shannon Lee

**Information about my diagnosis and PCOS**

What is PCOS? A hormonal disorder causing enlarged ovaries with small cysts on the outer edges.

The cause of polycystic ovary syndrome isn't well understood, but may involve a combination of genetic and environmental factors.


The exact cause of PCOS is unknown. Early diagnosis and treatment along with weight loss may reduce the risk of long-term complications such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.


Complications of PCOS can include:

Infertility
Gestational diabetes or pregnancy-induced high blood pressure
Miscarriage or premature birth
Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis — a severe liver inflammation caused by fat accumulation in the liver
Metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels that significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease
Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes
Sleep apnea
Depression, anxiety and eating disorders
Abnormal uterine bleeding
Cancer of the uterine lining (endometrial cancer)
Obesity is associated with PCOS and can worsen complications of the disorder.


Androgen Excess

There are data demonstrating that the hyperandrogenemia in PCOS women is associated with systolic and diastolic blood pressures in women with PCOS, independent of obesity or insulin resistance. Androgen excess has also been associated with an increase in cIMT in women with PCOS.


PCOS is linked to higher risks of high blood pressure, weight gain, high cholesterol, heart disease, hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), heart attack, and stroke.


Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the commonest endocrine disorder in women of reproductive age (prevalence 8–13%) (1). Chronic anovulation, hyperandrogenism and ovarian polycystic morphology are the defining features of PCOS.

PCOS is associated with multiple comorbidities including obesity, insulin resistance (IR), dyslipidaemia, gestational diabetes (GDM), type 2 diabetes (T2D), hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, impaired quality of life (QOL), cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality amongst others (2, 3, 4). Weight loss (by lifestyle intervention or bariatric surgery) remains the only specific treatment for PCOS. The remaining treatments are mainly symptomatic (oral contraceptives for irregular periods, anti-androgens for hirsutism, ovulation induction for infertility) (5). Hence, there is a need for better understanding of the pathogenesis of PCOS-related metabolic risk and comorbidities in order to develop effective therapies (6).

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is common, affecting 17–26% of men and 9–28% of women; the prevalence being lower in women of reproductive age compared to men (7). OSA is characterized by instability in the upper airways during sleep, leading to recurrent upper airway obstructions, sleep architecture disruption and cyclical changes in heart rate, blood pressure, sympathetic activity, intrathoracic pressure and oxygen saturations (7, 8). Obesity is very common in patients with OSA and PCOS (9). In addition, OSA is associated with similar comorbidities to PCOS, such as IR, GDM, T2D, hypertension, impaired QOL, CVD and mortality (7, 10). Hence, it is plausible that OSA and PCOS might co-exist and that either condition could contribute to the comorbidities of the other (9). This is further supported by a recent systematic review that showed that OSA prevalence in women with PCOS was 32% (95% CI: 13–55%) (11). However, these studies were of small size (n < 60), at risk of selection bias and cross-sectional design, barring the determination of the direction of relationship. Additionally, the study populations exclusively comprised patients with grade II obesity or higher. Hence, there is a need to examine the relationship between OSA and PCOS in a longitudinal population-based study, which allows to assess the impact of obesity.

Several mechanisms, other than obesity and insulin resistance, might increase the likelihood of OSA in women with PCOS compared to women without PCOS of similar adiposity including hyperandrogenism, low progesterone (due to anovulation) and increased oxidative stress (9).

We hypothesized that women with PCOS are at increased risk of developing OSA compared to women without PCOS regardless of the degree of obesity. The primary aim of this study was to assess the risk of incident OSA in women with PCOS vs women without PCOS and examine the role of obesity in the observed relationships. A secondary aim was to assess predictors of incident OSA in women with PCOS.



Bariatric surgery can be effective in achieving significant weight loss, restoration of the hypothalamic pituitary axis, reduction of cardiovascular risk and even in improving pregnancy outcomes. Ultimately, bariatric surgeryshould be considered part of the treatment in PCOS women, especially in those with MS.

With your help, I can get my life back and my health can start to improve. More information can be found in google search.