LeeAnne Soule’s Success Story

LeeAnne Soule lives in my home state of Washington with her husband and son. The following conversation is a Q&A we had a few months after she completed my Beat PCOS 10 Week Program in 2019. After LeeAnne posted this very popular and inspirational success story in my PCOS Support Group I knew I had to get the full story from her.

Note: LeeAnne also did my 30 Day PCOS Diet Challenge in the fall of 2018.

Kym: What were your biggest motivations for wanting to make changes and get your PCOS under control?

LeeAnne: I was so tired of being chronically sick and fatigued that I finally started searching for alternative solutions. The cocktail of medications I had been taking on and off for two decades never, ever made anything better.

In fact, most of the medications just created additional symptoms that I had to then find ways to combat. I even underwent what I now know to have been a medically unnecessary uterine ablation due to heavy, prolonged bleeding.

I spent two decades chasing around the entire list of common PCOS symptoms. Seriously, I’m a textbook case of PCOS after having experienced just about every symptom, as well as other symptoms that I didn’t recognize as being related to PCOS until much later. All of it was tied to the chronic inflammation within my body that I had no idea was happening.

Kym: Can you tell us about your experiences leading up to the birth of your son?

LeeAnne: I was able to conceive at age 26 with the help of medtroxyprogesterone (Provera) and clomiphene (Clomid). I was 120 pounds overweight at the time so my pregnancy was considered very high-risk.

I was told to continue taking Metformin through the first trimester of my pregnancy. I had been on Metformin since I was first diagnosed with PCOS and even though it always made me feel sick, we played with the dosage a bit and I continued taking it for years. I was also on 2-3 blood pressure medications throughout my pregnancy.

I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes around week 20 but I was not told how to eat properly to manage this condition. Diabetes runs in my family, so I just figured it was my time.

I ended up having to deliver at week 38 because of skyrocketing blood pressure but thankfully, I had a healthy son who is now 11 years old.

Kym: Women with PCOS often see a decline in their health after having children. Was this your experience also?

LeeAnne: Absolutely. After my son was born, I struggled more than ever with violent mood swings, an inability to control my emotions, depression, anxiety, chronic pelvic pain, etc. I went through a series of four or five birth control pills that doctors kept recommending, including “Yaz” which nearly resulted in my suicide. A lot of those birth control pills just made me feel psychotic for lack of a better word.

As I entered my 30s, the doctors told me that my blood pressure was too high to continue taking birth control pills. They convinced me to have an IUD (Mirena) inserted, and I agreed. I have never felt so awful as I felt when I had that IUD.

I had intense, constant ovary pain, my joints and bones hurt so much I could barely get out of bed, and my moods were insanely unstable. I tried to stick with it for almost a year, but it was unbearable and I begged to have it removed.

Once removed, I began bleeding and didn’t stop for several months. The doctors suggested that I may have uterine polyps, fibroids, etc. but found nothing. Instead, they suggested a uterine ablation (because according to them, that was the only way for my uterus to be completely cleared out) and tubal sterilization.

So at 36, I underwent bot