The next step

I called to renew some prescriptions the other day and discovered something interesting: my primary care physician is no longer with that practice. It would have been awfully nice to be told that the gatekeeper of our health care was no longer available, but on the whole, this is good news. Remember how I was uncertain about her competence? I've been feeling like I need to go back to the doctor again to talk about my PCOS meds, and I was avoiding it because I didn't want to deal with her, even long enough to say "I want to be referred to an endocrinologist."

So we need to call up our insurance and figure out who our doctor is, but once that happens, hopefully it will be someone with half a clue. Ever since switching to the extended release version of metformin last year, my weight has been slowly creeping up and now I'm starting to get some more PCOS symptoms back, even after upping my meds. Aargh. I'm hoping just switching back to regular metformin will fix this.

One particularly unwelcome symptom is increasingly funky cycles. I've had two relatively normal (probably) ovulatory cycles and one weird-ass (probably) ovulatory cycle. But now I'm on what is shaping up to be a weird-ass non-ovulatory cycle, dammit.

So I'm hoping that the new doctor will have half a clue. But if they don't, I'm going to demand a referral to an endocrinologist. As I was thinking this, it occurred to me that the most efficient thing to do is go to a reproductive endocrinologist. After all, they would probably be the best at treating syndromes that cause infertility like PCOS, and if these funky cycles continue for a few more months, I'm going to end up at one anyway. It just seems like a monumental step. We haven't been making a huge effort towards conception yet - we've been waiting for B's union to agree on a new contract with the city so we don't wind up pregnant and on strike, as well as taking a couple months to see what my cycles do. And my ob prescribed the clomid that got me pregnant last time, so I've never been to an RE. For some reason, the idea makes me nervous.

I suppose a lot of the problem is that I would just like the problem to be that I need to change my meds, and that will fix everything and let me accomplish pregnancy on my own for once. Because regardless of whether or not I get pregnant, I've had over five years largely symptom-free and I'd like to go back to that. Controlling PCOS isn't just an infertility issue, it's a whole-body health issue.