N2L - That sucks that you are feeling that way I hope if it is AF, she is gentle on you.

RhiChiChi, how do you know if it is an annovulatory cycle if you get PMS? I have read temping can confirm no ovulation. I'm guessing because no AF comes, but you had a positive OPK, right???
Tasha, you still have AF with anovulation cycles. A cycle is only finished when you start to bleed. If you haven't ovulated and you aren't bleeding, then the cycle is still current as there is still a chance that you will ovulate.

Temping confirms that no ovulation took place superficially because everything is as it would be if you did ovulate and there are only very subtle ways to tell that you didn't ovulate - like temping.

While OPKs can be good for identifying ovulation at times, they are not always accurate and because both lines have to be the same darkness or the test line darker than the control line, it can be interpreted wrong too. Also I do think it is possible to have a surge of hormones around the time that you should ovulate but there is not a mature egg to release. As anovulatory cycles happen to most women at some stage during their fertile years, and there are a number of reasons for this, the hormone levels will be different for different people during different cycles. So there is no one size fits all answer to why some women will have a positive OPK but no AF or a positive OPK but no ovulation. There also hasn't been lots of research done into this issue and the medical world seems to have very little understanding which makes it more difficult to get answers.

Since the only thing that is really different about an anovulation cycle to an ovulation cycle - besides not releasing an egg (which can be confirmed using ultrasound), temping is the only other real difference and the easiest way to tell at home. OPKs are good to tell you when you are having a hormone surge that results in releasing an egg, but temping is necessary if you want to confirm that the hormone surge was actually ovulation. If you have a positive OPK but no temp rise, I would keep temping and testing (if you can get OPKs cheap enough) until either AF arrived or another surge was detected followed by a temp rise as the cycle is not complete until AF arrives.