Mutate and Evolve

Today I know what the X-Men must have felt like. Mutants. Genetically flawed creatures that lurk in the shadows.

Ok- I’m exaggerating but you get the point.

My favorite was always Storm, but I digress.

Today I was diagnosed with “Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.” Just the name itself sounds like an alien. Like the first thing I thought of when they told me that was those sacks in the spaceship on Alien- you know what I am talking about?

Wait, here, let me find them.

Here:

Queen's eggs in the movie Alien.

Then my wild imagination took me to yet another horror movie. It was a movie that we watched in my Horror Film class with Dr. Ross at the University of Delaware (ah good times). I started imagining myself as the lead female protagonist in “The Brood” a helpless woman who gives birth to her alien spawn. Cronenberg, you sick bastard.

Was this my fate? Twisted, leathery alien eggs? Or disgusting mutant female breeder?

David Cronenberg's The Brood

Yuck.

Upon further research I decided to strut along to the old trusted Google. The first advertisement that came up on the side of the search bar was:

“Need an Egg Donor? 25 Healthy Female Candidates Click Here.”

Um, ew no Google. And WTF? Who are these “healthy female” candidates? Way to freak me out even more.

My personal doctors over at WebMD offered this:

“Polycystic ovary syndrome is a problem in which a woman’s hormones are out of balance. It can cause problems with your periods and make it difficult to get pregnant. PCOS may also cause unwanted changes in the way you look. If it is not treated, over time it can lead to serious health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease. Polycystic ovary syndrome (or PCOS) is common, affecting as many as 1 out of 15 women. Often the symptoms begin in the teen years. Treatment can help control the symptoms and prevent long-term problems.”

More research has shown me that PCOS can be curbed with diet and exercise and sometimes by taking medication.

However, and this is when those horror movies come into play, PCOS causes infertility and may make it hard for a woman to become pregnant. That is because:

“Women who suffer from PCOS have cysts (fluid-filled sacs) on their ovaries that prevent the ovaries from performing normally. PCOS affects regular reproductive functions, like the menstrual cycle, as well as fertility. Ovaries of PCOS suffers tend to be from 1.5 to 3 times larger than normal ovaries.” (source)

Now I’ve always been someone that really wanted kids. Like, really, really wanted kids.

When it dawned on me that PCOS could affect me having babies- that is when the mixed emotions started arising.

On one side- I am glad to know what is wrong with me. Why my hair has been falling out and my body has changed.

On the other side- I am upset and angry. I feel like I am a defected product, cast aside on the factory floor.

And yet, in the past few months I have started to feel more alive than I ever have before. I have started to finally accept myself for who I am, care about my body and what goes into it, meditate and clear my mind, focus my positive thoughts. I have worked towards my goals, gained recognition, progressed.

Could all these great accomplishments come from a reject? A mutant?

And weren’t the X-Men also superheroes? Protecting the world and shit?

I mean they were seriously badasses:

So- diagnosis or no diagnosis- and whatever the future may be, I will not live my life in fear of the “what ifs” or cast myself in the pile of “have-nots”

Instead I shall rise and evolve, just like Professor Xavier said in the first lines of X-Men, the movie:

“Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward.”