Academy Award-nominated actor Florence Pugh candidly spoke about her journey with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, and how the diagnoses impacted her life and her views on fertility. The 28-year-old actor sat down for an interview with the She MD podcast and shared her recent diagnosis to encourage more women to take their health seriously.

‘My life has completely changed…’

Talking about her diagnosis, Florence said in the podcast, “My life has completely changed since finding out this information…and in a great way, because it means that I really have to be on the board, and I really have to take it a bit more seriously than I would have done.” The actor discovered she had PCOS last summer (when she was 27) when she had a ‘sudden feeling’ that she should get herself checked out. “I had this sudden feeling that I should go and get everything checked. I’d had a few weird dreams; I think my body was telling me,” she said.

Then, Florence met with a gynaecologist, Dr Thaïs Aliabadi, also a host on the podcast, to address her concerns and get some tests done. It was at the gynaecologist that Florence first got to know that she had to get her egg count checked. “She (Dr Aliabadi) asked if I’d ever had an egg count done, and I was like, ‘No, what do you mean? I’m so young. Why do I need an egg count?’” she revealed.

When Dr Aliabadi conducted the egg count, she confirmed that the 28-year-old actor had PCOS and endometriosis and urged the actor - who was 27 at the time - to freeze her eggs if she planned to have children in the future. Pugh further stated that the diagnosis came as a surprise because - “It was just so bizarre because my family are baby-making machines. When Mom had babies into her 40s, my gran had babies throughout. I just never assumed that I was going to be in any way different and that there was going to be an issue with it. It just really wasn’t a red flag for me.”

‘This is such a simple conversation’

The diagnosis helped Florence educate herself and tell her friend about it. "I’ve been able to tell my friends about what I’m going through. And since then, I think two or three of my friends have gone to go and get checked because of my findings, and they’ve also found that they have the same thing,” she said.

The Oppenheimer actor also expressed her sympathy for women who had their diagnosis later in life. “I've been wanting kids since I was a child,” she noted, expressing her luck in finding out about PCOS and ways to deal with it. “This is such a simple conversation that we should be having when we start our periods or when we start having sex. It really, really should not take this long for someone to find out about this diagnosis that they have no idea what it is,” she stated.

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