For half her life, doctors told her to lose weight. But something else was going on.

To Deborah E. Savage, a trip to the doctor was frequently an exercise in humiliation.

For more than 15 years, Savage’s doctors doled out the same advice: You need to stop gaining weight. When Savage replied that she had tried watching her diet and exercising, only to pack on more pounds, it was clear they simply didn’t believe her. Her family was equally skeptical.

“I would eat like my sister, and I would gain weight but she wouldn’t,” recalled Savage, a civil engineer who lives in Montgomery County and turns 31 next month.

[Doctors were startled to find the cause of this 24-year-old’s excruciating pain]

Savage’s inexorable weight gain, which began in middle school and resulted in obesity, was not her only problem: For years, she also struggled with eruptions of painful acne and facial hair. “These things made me feel ugly,” she said.

For years, Debbie Savage kept gaining weight. She was plagued by horrific acne and apathetic doctors. (Courtesy of Debbie Savage)

Last year, after Savage had trouble getting pregnant, an inability she suspected was linked to her irregular periods, she consulted a new obstetrician/gynecologist. The doctor suggested that Savage’s constellation of problems might have a single cause. But it took a second OB/GYN to conduct the proper tests, which led to a definitive diagnosis of a common — and consequential — disorder.

“It’s frustrating to me that so many doctors” didn’t think of this, she said. “If I’d known, I would have made changes years ago.”

Comparisons rankled

From the time she was 12, Savage recalled, her inability to lose weight became one of the defining elements of her life. And because she is short — 5-foot-3 — extra pounds were particularly noticeable. Her family’s comparisons with her older, thinner sister rankled.

[He couldn’t eat, drink or work. And doctors couldn’t explain his searing pain.]

At her mother’s suggestion, Savage joined a gym, but that didn’t help her lose more than a few pounds.
Savage said she was too intimidated to ask her doctors why her weight didn’t budge much, even when she faithfully followed a diet and worked out.
Nor did she mention the other problems that plagued her. “The facial hair thing was embarrassing, so I didn’t want to talk about it,” she recalled. “Same with the acne. I felt so sensitive about it.”

.Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer