By Danielle Swain
danielle@newsroom.gy
Monique Balgobin arrived at the Skin Fairy clinic on Duke Street in Kingston, Georgetown, with the calm familiarity of someone who had done this several times before. She drove a black Toyota Fielder wagon, her mother in the front seat and her baby sister behind her, an unremarkable procession that marked the assurance of someone used to navigating tough situations.
This was her fourth laser facial hair removal treatment, routine by medical standards, but for thousands of people who follow her on TikTok, it was another chapter in a story they have been watching unfold in real time.
Under the username @msbalgobin18, Balgobin has been documenting the everyday realities of living with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) for months. Hair removal routines, skincare tips, lifestyle adjustments and honest reflections on the emotional toll of the condition. Her videos are not glossy. They are direct. They show what it looks like to manage a body that does not behave as expected.
PCOS is a hormonal condition that affects an estimated one in ten women worldwide. It can disrupt menstrual cycles, cause excessive hair growth or hair loss, complicate fertility, and contribute to anxiety and depression. There is no cure. For most women and girls, treatment is not a single solution but a long negotiation with symptoms, through medication, lifestyle changes, and, in some cases, cosmetic or dermatological care.
Balgobin, who is from East Canje, Berbice, has been living with PCOS symptoms for more than a decade, long before she had a diagnosis to name them.
“I was diagnosed at the age of eighteen,” she said.
Before that, her menstrual cycle arrived normally for about a year, then began to disappear. Months passed. Then years. Facial hair appeared. The hair on her head, a crown of locs past her back, began to thin.
“You just think it’s genetics,” she said. “But as I got older, it got worse.”
By the time doctors confirmed PCOS, the physical changes were already braided with emotional ones.
“PCOS comes with a lot of symptoms, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks,” she said. “I would get them almost every day.” The condition followed her beyond the privacy of her home and into public space, where strangers felt entitled to commentary. “Sometimes you get asked, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’” she said.
“So I said to myself, I need persons to know what is going on. This is not something I went to the shop and buy.”
That decision to explain herself took Monique online.
On TikTok, she began sharing the things she wished someone had told her. What worked, what didn’t, what felt unbearable and what felt survivable. What began as a personal coping mechanism became a public resource. Her account now has more than 10,000 followers and over 200,000 likes, many from women and girls who recognize themselves in her routines.
“I put myself out there,” she said. “Even though I get hate comments, I still put it behind me. People reach out to me saying they’re dealing with symptoms and they want somebody to talk to. So eventually I became a safe space for them.”
As her videos spread, so did the commentary. Some supportive, others cruel. What surprised her most was not the volume of criticism, but its source.
“The most surprising part is females actually bashing you,” she said. Still, she kept posting. “At this point, there’s nothing nobody can say to throw me down. I’ve had it all.”
One of the most visible and emotionally taxing symptoms of PCOS is excessive facial hair. Balgobin decided to try laser treatment after months of uncertainty.
“Within the first two weeks of my first session, I noticed the hair growth tremendously reduced,” she said. “It’s not permanent, but it’s laser reduction. It boosted my confidence. Dealing with PCOS takes your confidence from one hundred to zero real quick.”
She chose to share that process, too, resisting the temptation to present it as a miracle fix. “Not everything that works for me is going to work for you,” she said. “That’s how PCOS is.”
Then, in the middle of explaining what kept her going, her voice changed.
Balgobin had been speaking about her support, about her parents, her friends, her aesthetician Mandy, when she stopped. Her eyes filled. She clasped her hands tightly.
“I gave the people around me like a hell of a hard time,” she said quietly.
She wiped her face. Paused. “They were there for me,” she said, “when I couldn’t even be there for myself.
PCOS, she explained, did not only alter her body. It altered her moods, her patience, her relationships. There were days she did not recognize herself, days when the people closest to her carried the weight of her anger and exhaustion. For years, they absorbed it. She is still learning how to forgive herself for that.
Her mother, Wendy Balgobin, remembers the early warning signs and as a parent, she learned to read her daughter’s moods and energy levels, adjusting her expectations on difficult days.
“No matter what, I’m the mother and that’s my kid,” she said. “I go to support her. I wanted to protect her from the world, from people looking at her different.”
Watching Monique share her story publicly has been both painful and affirming. “I feel like a hero, mother of a hero,” Wendy said. “What Monique does, a lot of PCOS girlies out there cannot do it.”
Monique is careful not to present herself as someone who has it all figured out. Her story, she insists, is about continuity. “PCOS changes your life tremendously,” she said. “But it’s not the end of the world. You just need to be there for yourself.”
At Skin Fairy, the laser machine hummed softly. The technician worked methodically. Balgobin lay still, her hands folded, her phone vibrating now and then beside her.
In making her life visible, with all its rituals and difficulties and gratitude and grief, Monique Balgobin has created a small public space for others to shelter in.
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