Florence Pugh Reveals She Froze Her Eggs After PCOS & Endometriosis Diagnosis

This week, on an episode of the SHE MD podcast, Florence Pugh spoke at length about being diagnosed with endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) for the first time.

“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,” the 28-year-old Oscar-nominated actor told her doctor, Beverly Hills gynecologist, Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, and women’s health advocate and influencer, Mary Alice Haney.

“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?'” Pugh said. She went on to describe noticing certain symptoms like “acne…hair that shouldn't be in certain places," but had previously chalked all of it up to "part of being a woman" who leads a "slightly stressful life."

When Aliabadi conducted the egg count, she diagnosed Pugh with PCOS and endometriosis—both conditions that can seriously hinder a chance of getting pregnant, or of having a healthy pregnancy. Pugh, who has a large family and has long wanted children, said she was dumbfounded.

“It was just so bizarre because my family are baby-making machines. My mom had babies into her forties. My gran had babies throughout...And then of course, I learned completely different information, at age 27, that I need to get my eggs out, and do it quickly, which was just a bit of a mind-boggling realization, and one that I'm really lucky and glad that I found out when I did because I've been wanting kids since I was a child," Pugh said.

Speaking about how the diagnosis has altered her life, Pugh said she realized "you have to change your lifestyle, you have to be proactive and think ahead into the future." That, obviously, included freezing her eggs. “I think [for] lots of young women, that's not really necessarily what you're thinking of doing when you're in your 20s.”

Suddenly, Pugh's passion for her role in We Live in Time makes a lot of sense. In the film, her character—an ambitious, child-averse chef who's fallen in love with a man who wants to have a family is diagnosed with ovarian cancer and forced to decide between undergoing a partial or full hysterectomy. Obviously, a full hysterectomy offers her a better chance of not eventually dying from the disease. Yet, she takes the risk and opts for the partial, so she can carry and deliver their child.

"I had been looking forward to playing a current-day woman who deals with the things me and my friends deal with," Pugh said of the role in October. She also said she was drawn to the story for the way it approaches "women's dilemma in whether they want to be successful and hardworking and have a profession they are proud of in the same time frame that they're also supposed to be thinking about becoming a mother."

"That is something that so many women I know juggle with, that I juggle with," Pugh said.

Later in the podcast, Pugh bemoaned an overall lack of knowledge about PCOS and endometriosis: “It wouldn't be that hard to educate everybody on this when you're at school. It's something that will be the defining factor of whether you can have children or not."

On that note, cheers to her for using her platform in an attempt to demystify these, unfortunately, very common conditions.