By March this year, we will be dating for one year and I can say that emotionally and spiritually I have never grown with someone this much that I could consider spending the rest of my life with them.
She was diagnosed with PCOS a few years ago. As a result, she has a bit higher level of male hormones in her system.
She is studying medicine so she understands her condition better than me obviously, but she seems not to take her condition seriously.
She is 170cm and she weighs less than 50kg.
She says she wants to gain weight. And I’ve encouraged her to do so for her health and fertility. But when we start talking about it, she says she doesn’t want her butt and cheeks to look big because of weight gain.
In the past, her gynecologist gave her medicine to regulate her periods as she would only have her peroid once every few months.
She stoped with the medication all of a sudden, for no reason. Then her symptoms came back. She started feeling pain ‘down there’ and the doctor found cysts growing.
And it could have probably be avoided if she took her meds.
From then on, I reminded her every single morning at 7am to take her medication for about a month. Eventually she admitted to me that she hadn’t been taking her medication consistently.
Her medicine ran out eventually and she hasn’t gone for a repeat.
One day, I escorted her to the pharmacy myself to go get her medication and she refused to take the prescription because it was a generic brand and not the original (which is the EXACT same thing, confirmed by the pharmiscist).
We didn’t see each other during the month of December due to the festive season.
When I saw her at the beginning of this month, she was even skinnier than before. She told me that she was fasting for religious reasons.
And I also realised she had way more pimples and she is growing a subtle moustache.
A risk that her doctor told her that her state of PCOS can cause infertility in the future. So she needs to take her medicine and achieve a healthy weight.
I hate to admit it, but I’m not as proud as I was before walking around with her in public with how skinny she’s become.
What bothers me the most sometimes is that she’s not taking this seriously. We both agree that we want children in the future, but she’s not taking care of her health. I fear that I won’t be to have children of my own because of this in the next 3-5 years.
When I begin talking about her health, she becomes dismissive and she says her ability to have children isn’t a priority right now.
TLDR: Can I please have your advice on my girlfriend who doesn’t want to take care of her health.
Kind regard
3 comments
Sounds like your girlfriend needs a therapist.she needs help
Generic drugs a pharmacist can legally give you must be therapeutically equivalent.
There is not a single reason to be worried about weight gain or not take your medication, that’s irresponsible.
PCOS- average weight gain of women with PCOS vs those without according to research is 2.6kg over 10 years. That is 5.7 pounds over a decade.
https://bmcendocrdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12902-019-0434-8
First line treatment- Combination Oral Contraceptive – most women think they gain weight on birth control. That is because body composition changes.
If your body thinks you are pregnant like any effective OC tells it, body fat percentage of what’s already there goes up but weight stays neutral.
Best research available shows actual weight gain is not a side effect. Here is a systemic review of research on the subject.
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003987.pub5/full
Adjunctive treatment- Spironolactone
During all clinical trials to approve the drug weight gain was not a reported side effect.
In a more recent study on the drug being used for why it would here(acne/hair) no side effect experienced was weight gain.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3315877/
She either refuses to look up scientifically driven studies on the matter to know more than saying she knows, or more likely needs a referral to a psychiatrist to talk about why she isn’t eating.
Unfortunately, you can’t make her take her meds. She has a right to be perfectly miserable with the side effects of PCOS and the potential irreparable damage it causes if she doesn’t want to address it. We gotta respect patient autonomy.
Hopefully you can bring it up to her parents.
You cant force anyone to look after their health
I dont know much about pcos but I did live with someone with a hidden eating disorder, and that flagged up many times in your post
Maybe your dealing with 2 separate and serious issues here
Bottom line, you’re a spectator and it’s going to stay that way, how long do you want to watch her not help herself?