Ep 181 PCOS: Beyond the cysts

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.8 • 17.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What’s in a name? What can you really tell from a label like “polycystic ovarian syndrome”? And how much of that is more misconception than truth? The answer, as it turns out, is the former. In this episode, we delve into the world of PCOS, a world that shows us how preconceived notions of health and disease, gender and sexuality can do far more harm than good. For many people with PCOS, this condition violates society’s expectations of how you should look, act, or feel. And the resulting stigma and shame deepens the silence that often surrounds PCOS and leads to inadequate treatment and medical gaslighting. But thanks to the work of some incredible advocates, that silence is slowly fading. Tune in to discover the many lessons that PCOS can teach us, if only we are willing to learn.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is exactly right.
0:07.0	Hi, my name's Logan. I'm a transgender man.
0:10.0	I use he-him pronouns, and I have PCOS.
0:13.0	My symptoms first started really appearing when I hit puberty.
0:17.0	My periods would last a week on average, and they were very heavy. The cramps would be so
0:23.5	bad that I couldn't walk, I couldn't sleep. I was just lay awake at night and agony despite taking
0:29.6	pain medications. I also had very severe acne and I had a lot of excess body and facial hair.
0:36.5	If I didn't shave or pluck my hair, I could actually grow like this scraggly little chin beard,
0:42.5	which was very affirming to me as a young transmasculine person.
0:46.4	That was probably the only benefit of having PCOS was the masculizing features.
0:52.2	But the time I was 19, my periods became even more painful if that
0:56.1	was possible and even more irregular. At one point, I went 10 months without a period. December
1:02.8	2018 is when I first experienced a cyst bursting. I was sitting in a college math final at the time,
1:08.4	and I remember being in so much pain from my abdomen
1:11.4	that I could barely breathe. I managed to finish the final, but I could hardly walk because
1:16.5	of the pain, so I was rushed to the ER. When we got there, I was not treated well. They started
1:23.4	off by accusing me of faking my pain to get opioids, but soon after they thought that
1:28.3	it could be appendicitis. I had to get blood drawn and a cat scan. They actually ended up
1:34.3	bursting one of the veins in my arm, trying to do the die for the cat scan, so that was also
1:39.4	not a fun experience. When the doctor finally came in to give me a diagnosis, or so I thought,
1:46.0	all he really told me was, your appendix is fine, but you have multiple cysts on both your
1:52.1	ovaries, so just go on birth control. And then I was dismissed right after with no diagnosis.
	...

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