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.”

1 of 26 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The case files: Medical mysteries View Photos From a daily afternoon fever to a debilitating reaction to chemotherapy, here’s a look at perplexing medical mystery cases. Caption From a daily afternoon fever to a debilitating reaction to chemotherapy, here’s a look at perplexing medical mystery cases. Doctors were stumped by this 2-year-old boy’s symptoms. He had swollen thumbs, bleeding gums and anemia. He cried whenever anyone touched his legs. Doctors were running out of time. Read the case Cam Cottrill/For The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

Savage wasn’t sure what to make of her irregular menstrual periods, but doctors did not seem concerned. At times she went three months without a period; at other times they lasted for two weeks. She managed to lose a little weight in college, but her acne and other problems persisted.

[Odd teeth: A mother’s Internet sleuthing led to her daughter’s troubling diagnosis]

In her early 20s, Savage said, her gynecologist chided her about how heavy she was; every year, she seemed to gain 10 pounds. “I explained that I had tried diet and exercise, but he said I was not trying hard enough,” Savage recalled.

To regulate her menstrual cycle and tame her acne, the doctor prescribed oral contraceptives, which helped clear her skin and made her periods somewhat less irregular.

When she got married in 2010, Savage and her husband joined a popular weight-loss program to see whether they could motivate each other.

Savage said she lost only about eight pounds after several months, while her husband, who followed the same diet, had no trouble shedding much more weight.

“It was very frustrating,” she recalled. “I was serious about following the rules, but it didn’t pay off. I kind of gave up.”

[A simple test proved that a teen with stomach pain wasn’t a hypochondriac after all]

By early 2015, she was desperate. She had stopped taking the pill nearly a year earlier, in hopes of getting pregnant; without it, her acne had roared back and her facial-hair problem had worsened. Savage was at her heaviest weight — about 240 pounds — and her family doctor warned that her cholesterol, at 210 mg/dL, was too high.

In March, sheswitched gynecologists. Her new doctor zeroed in on her irregular periods and her weight and asked Savage whether she had heard of a metabolic disorder called polycystic ovarian (or ovary) syndrome.

Polycystic ovarian (or ovary) syndrome is a condition that affects up to five million American women, but it often goes undiagnosed. Here are the basics. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

Savage replied that a friend in college had been diagnosed with PCOS. She was surprised when the doctor responded that she suspected Savage might have it, too.

An explanation at last

PCOS is a common hormonal imbalance that often begins in puberty and affects as many as 10 percent of women. Its cause is unknown, but heredity appears to play a role: Women whose mothers or sisters have the disorder are at higher risk. Many women with PCOS have enlarged ovaries containing fluid-filled cysts that produce excess androgens — male sex hormones, which interfere with ovulation. Other signs of PCOS include irregular, absent or prolonged periods, acne and excess facial and body hair, a condition known as hirsutism.

Because it also disrupts the regulation of insulin, many women with PCOS are overweight or obese. The disorder, which can be controlled but not cured, also increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attack.

[Doctors dismissed his pain as migraines. Then they said he had 24 hours to live.]

The gynecologist told Savage that she also suffered from PCOS. When Savage asked whether it was possible to test for the disorder, she said that the gynecologist told her, erroneously, that there were no tests. The best way to treat the problem was to lose weight, the doctor advised. And, the gynecologist added, she held weight-loss seminars in her office and urged Savage to sign up.

Savage declined. Two weeks later, she consulted a third OB/GYN, Neil Horlick, who practices in Montgomery and Frederick counties.

Horlick, after taking her history and performing an exam, said he suspected she had PCOS. When Savage told him she had been told there was no test for it, he assured her that testing was available and that he would order it.

Because abnormalities of the thyroid or adrenal glands can cause similar symptoms, those must be ruled out first. PCOS is essentially a diagnosis of exclusion, made on the basis of blood tests, a patient’s symptoms and an ultrasound of the ovaries.

[At first, this man thought he had food poisoning. It turned out to be something far worse.]

“We generally look for two out of three criteria for PCOS,” Horlick said. These include a history of irregular or absent periods, elevated levels of male hormones, particularly testosterone, and the presence of ovarian cysts. In Savage’s case, an ultrasound showed no cysts, but she did have an elevated testosterone level.

Horlick said he was surprised that Savage’s condition went undiagnosed for so long. “PCOS is always on our radar” when a patient with irregular periods complains of weight gain and hirsutism, Horlick said.

He told Savage that her best chance of getting pregnant involved losing weight. Horlick prescribed metformin, a diabetes drug that can promote weight loss. Metformin is commonly given to PCOS patients and may help promote ovulation as well.

Savage decided to take a new approach to food. She began following a paleo diet, which emphasizes meat, vegetables, nuts and fruit, and drastically reduces the intake of carbohydrates, sugar and processed foods.

The first month, she said, she was elated to discover that she had lost 15 pounds; between April and September, she shed 50 pounds and her cholesterol dropped 20 points. Her acne also improved, her level of testosterone dropped, and her menstrual cycle became more regular.

Savage said she asked relatives whether anyone else had been diagnosed with PCOS. “My parents had never heard of it,” she said.

In October 2015, she and her husband were elated to learn that she was pregnant with identical twin boys. Savage spent six weeks hospitalized at Maryland’s Shady Grove Medical Center under close observation, because her twins have a rare condition in which they share a single amniotic sac and placenta, a condition unrelated to PCOS. The babies were born April 22.

Savage said she hopes that her experience will spare other women from “struggling for years the way I did.”

“This isn’t a bizarre disorder,” she said. “It shouldn’t take [this many] doctors to find out, when I have a textbook case.”

Read more:

He went from playful little boy to a ‘zombie.’ Why wouldn’t the doctors listen?

It seemed like a heart attack, but the tests said no.

He had hallucinations. The doctors said it was dementia, but they were wrong.

Submit your solved medical mystery to sandra.boodman@washpost.com. No unsolved cases, please. Read previous mysteries at wapo.st/medicalmysteries.