It is not everyday that people talk openly about their birth control. And especially if that birth control happens to be a tiny piece of plastic planted in your uterus.
But we should.
We should create dialogue about the buffet of birth control options on the market today. Why? To further prevent the harmful scenarios that can arise from a birth control that doesn’t get along with your body. To prevent the scenarios that myself and millions of other women across the globe have experienced all because of an itty-bitty “miracle” device.
In April 2013, I had Mirena IUD inserted (for lack of better term). To be honest, I take the blame for the array of problems that I experienced in the following year and a half. I take the blame because I should have done my homework and should have known better. But when you’re 18 years old and don’t want to rely on taking a pill everyday, you believe the doctor when she tells you that this thing is the “holy grail of birth controls.” It should also be noted that Mirena can even stop your period over the course of time, so, it was obviously a no-brainer.
It really wasn’t bad at first. In fact, I will even go as far as to say that the first two weeks post-insertion were probably the best for me in the next year and a half to come. I experienced the typical cramping and what not, but then other side effects happened.
That summer, I went home for break and began experiencing the worst anxiety I have ever had. This anxiety only got worse and worse as time went on. The kind of anxiety that makes you not want to get out of bed solely because you know your thoughts will catch up with you again.
This anxiety worsened throughout my sophomore year of college to the point where I was placed on a different anxiety medication (at the highest dosage available), alongside Adderall… because that is a good idea.
Not so much.
Eventually, sophomore year came and went, and at the beginning of this school year, I was at my wit’s end. I was anxious all the time, and quite frankly, I wasn’t myself anymore. Come September, I marched myself into Student Health to have some blood work done because my anxiety was pretty much able to convince me of anything at that point.
I received a call from my physician two days later with the results of my blood work. She told me I was “severely anemic” and believed I was bleeding internally, causing the anemia. I was referred to a GI specialist who then ended up finding a polyp on my colon. The kicker: both colonic polyps and anemia can be side effects of Mirena (oh, and anxiety/depression, too).
And what I got was incredibly minor compared to some women. While Mirena is incredibly effective in preventing pregnancy, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And when it does, it’s typically an ectopic pregnancy, occurring outside of the uterus. Basically, the baby’s chances of surviving are slim-- not to mention the mental and emotional turmoil that comes along with losing a child.
Other side effects include missed or complete loss of periods, abdominal pain, ovarian cysts, hair loss, nausea, anxiety, depression, mood swings, dizziness, anemia, or even the IUD becoming embedded in the walls of your uterus, requiring surgical removal.
Sounds fun, right?
After deciding that my anxiety and bout of depression was in fact not caused by any life occurrences, and nothing I was doing was causing my other health issues, I bid farewell to my Mirena IUD in October 2015. Two weeks later, my anxiety was cut damn near in half. Funny how that works when you stop putting chemicals into your body…
Truth be told, there will never be a perfect form of birth control. There will never be some magic device that doesn’t carry some baggage with it. Each and every birth control on the market has some kind of side effect, it is just a matter of deciding which one you’re willing to put up with for the sake of screwing with Mother Nature for lighter periods and not getting pregnant.
Until these medical magicians come up with something that is non-hormonal and runs nearly no risks, we can start by doing our homework, something I desperately wish I had done prior to my year and a half relationship with Mirena.
Go online. Read about these things before you put them into your body. My story is far from the worst one out there. One that may have been prevented had I got online a couple days prior to my doctor’s appointment.
Convenience is not synonymous with perfection.