How Fertility Awareness Can Help Doctors Treating Premature Ovarian Failure

by Margaret Brady
Natural Womanhood

I’ll never forget the look on the doctor’s face as he pulled my test results off the fax machine.

He made me and my husband sit down in his office. Time slowed to a crawl as the doctor drew a diagram of my body and gently explained that the reproductive part of it was dying. There was nothing we could do to fix me, he said. “I’m so sorry. It’s virtually impossible you’ll ever get pregnant again.”

I walked out of the office 30 minutes later, stunned with grief. The bustling street outside was packed with cars and streaming with headlights. The busy drivers hurried on to their next destination, oblivious to how life for the woman on the sidewalk had changed forever.

The term my doctor had used was Premature Ovarian Failure, but I later learned that the more accurate term is Premature Ovarian Insufficiency, or POI. It’s defined as the loss of ovarian function before a woman reaches the age of 40. The average age of diagnosis is 27, but girls in their teens can experience the condition too. In fact, 1 out of every 100 women are eventually affected, making it very likely that each of us knows a woman with POI, or a girl who will grow up to receive the diagnosis.

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