birth control stroke - Page 2

Stroke Caused By the Birth Control Pill

Published on
2144 views
stroke caused by birth control

I thought I was safe using the birth control pill. Even though I was older than the typical birth control pill user, my doctor felt that the newer low dose pills were safe enough for me. I had been using birth control pills off and on for about 10 years, but leading up to my wedding in February, 2012, I switched to a new brand, Kariva. The pill I had been using previously was making my migraines worse, and they seemed to be a bit better on Kariva.

A few days before my wedding, I noticed that my leg was swollen. I had an ultrasound test to look for a clot, but nothing was found. After our wedding, my husband and I flew to his hometown for a second reception. The day after the two-hour return flight I went back to work. That was the day that I had my stroke. It started in the morning with a headache that felt like another one of my chronic migraines. I took my usual remedies of Sudafed and either Aleve or Excedrin Migraine to dull the headache so I would be able to work. I spent a good part of that day writing a customer report, and noticed I was making a lot of typing errors.

At the end of the work day I went home and went to bed to rest. My head didn’t feel right, so my husband called an ambulance about 7 pm. They didn’t see anything noticeably wrong. My husband called the ambulance again about an hour later when I could no longer walk. My left leg was paralyzed. We went to a nearby hospital, and they discovered I was having a stroke. I had a CT scan and an MRI. I don’t remember any of this as I was unconscious. Due to the nature of the stroke, a sagittal venous sinus thrombosis, they felt they did not know how to treat the stroke. This type of stroke is thought to be quite unusual. They sent me to another hospital downtown (by helicopter). That hospital sent me to St. Joseph Medical Center / Barrow Neurological Institute the next day.

Starting at my frontal lobe, and going through the parietal lobe, my main brain drain vein had clotted. Blood was leaking into my brain all along the vein since the blood couldn’t drain. There was damage to both the left and right sides of the brain, and my brain had swollen. I was first given heparin, then warfarin. I was in ICU for about eleven days, until my brain was not swollen anymore. Then I was moved over to the acute rehab ward for another month. I continued rehab, all three flavors, physical, occupational and speech at St. Joseph’s Outpatient Rehabilitation, until my allotted 60 hours of therapy from insurance was used up. I continued going to the Neuro-Rehab clinic again the next year when I started over with the 60 hours of therapy. My neurologist was of the opinion that my stroke was most likely caused by the birth control pill.

I had to learn how to write again, dress and shower myself, and most importantly walk. My entire left side was not functioning at first, but my left arm came back rapidly. I had to be able to walk a certain distance using a walker before I went home. It felt like I had been gone from home forever! I am still working on my rehab four years later. The left side paralysis resolved into left side weakness at the in-patient rehab hospital. I continue to perform exercises at home (physical and cognitive), and I am walking without a cane now.

I returned to driving with the help of a specialized occupational therapy company that works with disabled people, at about six months after my stroke. My visuospatial abilities were affected by the stroke, and I had to learn how to react fast enough, keep my car in the center of the lane, and pay attention to everything going on around me.

I had significant problems with my executive brain function and fatigue. I saw a speech therapist for about 3 years. In addition, I took classes at a local community college, one class per semester. I graduated last week from a certificate program in Database Management. Prior to the stroke, I was an engineer at a manufacturing company. My ultimate goal is to go back to work.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Related posts:

birth control brain clotsBrain Bombs: Survivors’ Stories of Birth Control Induced Strokes migraines and birth controlMigraines and Birth Control: A Neglected Stop Sign Birth control induced pulmonary emboliBirth Control Induced Pulmonary Emboli: Sudden and Slow

You might be interested in

Being a Feminist: Hormonal Birth Control Not Required

Published on
7023 views
Women Unite

Before I get further into dissecting the Nelson Pill Hearings I want to pause and talk about feminism and my intent for this project. The history of the birth control pill and the history of feminism are closely tied, because, of course, if women can control when and/or whether they have children, they have power over their own lives. First-wave feminists knew this. It was Margaret Sanger after all who coined the term “birth control” and conceived (pardon the pun) the idea of the pill in the first place. And so it’s no surprise that the release of the birth control pill in 1960 ushered in the second wave of feminism.

Somewhere, somehow, many people confused the right to choose with blind acceptance of hormonal birth control as “freedom.” These may be the same people who liken questioning the government with being unpatriotic. I suggest that in a democracy it is our most patriotic duty to scrutinize whether our government is acting in the best interest of its people. Likewise, as feminists it is our duty to scrutinize what may or may not be serving women.

The F Words – Feminism and Freedom

Many people believe that having unlimited access to every kind of birth control is the only way to be a feminist and therefore speaking out against the pill or other hormonal birth control is anti-women. Let us consider for a moment the types of birth control that are encouraged, advertised, and prescribed, and with these medications, whose body is being affected? Who will pay if these methods fail? Who has to deal with the side effects? As someone who suffered a stroke while on the birth control pill, I am keenly aware of the price that comes with this “freedom.”

Anti-feminists like to write a lot of articles about how women want to have it all—as if everyone doesn’t want to have it all. That’s not a feminist concept, that’s an American ideal. So, yes, as an American I want to have it all. I want birth control that doesn’t come with the risk of blood clots. I want birth control that isn’t going to kill me, make me fat, give me acne, create mood swings, or lower my libido. Why would I want all the freedom to have sex without getting pregnant with none of the desire to actually have sex?

Why is Birth Control the Sole Responsibility of Women?

Which brings us to the question—where is the pill for men? Still being tested? We hear about this birth control for men every few years, but it has yet to materialize. Is that because it’s being more thoroughly tested than any hormonal birth control they have ever released for women? The original birth control pill was tested on poor women in Puerto Rico who were not even informed that they were part of a study. This article cannot even begin to explore how the fertility of poor and minority women has been systematically targeted and abused in the name of limiting population growth. That’s a whole other topic. And I’ll be explaining the Puerto Rican trials more in future articles but it is important to note that there were only two years between when the research in Puerto Rico began and the birth control pill was approved for use in the United States. Yet every article about birth control for men suggests that many more years of study are required before we’ll every see this as a reality.

But maybe there is no pill for men yet because the side effects have been deemed unacceptable?

At the Nelson Pill Hearings, Dr. Whitelaw, a private physician and early fertility specialist, asked, “How many adult males would be willing to take an oral contraceptive faithfully if they were told that instead of a possible 50-plus adverse side reaction only one remained, that being the possible loss of sex drive and libido?” How many indeed.

But if loss of libido doesn’t scare you, how about the “50-plus adverse side reactions”? Even in 1970, hormonal birth control was linked not just to blood clots (and by extension DVT, PE, and stroke) but also to cancer, infertility, miscarriages, and even diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. And that’s just the beginning.

However, and this is a big HOWEVER- it is not my goal to demonize the pill or any other hormonal birth control. It is not my goal to unnecessarily scare people. It’s simply my goal to educate about the dangers of these hormones that are over-prescribed and under-researched. Because I’m a feminist, I believe it is a woman’s right to choose. But that choice must be an informed one. Soon I’ll be writing more about how women are informed by looking at risk communication with these and other medicines.

Information or Patronization?

From what I’ve read so far in the hearings, every doctor who has testified has agreed that women need to be better informed of the dangers of hormonal birth control. Except one. Dr. Robert W. Kistner from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Harvard Medical School said, “I don’t believe it is good medical practice with any medication to go through the list of possible complications.” And by way of explanation for this he says that if you tell a woman that headaches are a possible side effect of the birth control pill, then they will get headaches. I wonder if the same can be said for blood clots? It is also interesting to note when Dr. Kistner was asked by the committee if he had ever worked for the pharmaceutical companies, he answered, “Yes, all of them.”

Maybe it’s time for people like Dr. Kistner and Senator Bob Dole, who was also at the Nelson Pill Hearings, to stop being concerned with women’s “emotional reactions” to information about the pill. And give us the full story even though he thinks it may “confuse the women we seek to protect.” Because unlike Bob Dole, I think that women not only can handle the truth about hormonal birth control, but that they deserve it. It’s time to stop allowing corporations and agenda-driven legislation to decide what we can and cannot understand, what we do and don’t need to know about medications that affect us.

Because are women really liberated if we have taken the freedom to choose and handed it to pharmaceutical companies?

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Related posts:

Spin doctor birth controlThe Spin Doctor’s Prescription for Birth Control

You might be interested in

Birth Control and Blood Clots: Where Do We Go from Here?

Published on
2700 views
Nelson Pill Hearings

When I was 28 years old, I had a massive stroke (a cerebral venous thrombosis in the sagittal sinus area) from a combination of birth control pills and a fairly common clotting disorder, Factor V Leiden. You can read my story here (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).

As I mentioned in a previous article, I’ve recently been contacted by an amazing group of people who are making it their mission to research and share information about the safety of hormonal birth control and other women’s health issues. In looking for answers about her daughter’s death from the Nuva-Ring, Dru West came across my thesis online and contacted me about my research. After a series of equally serendipitous events, I was then invited to be part of a research team who will further study blood clots and hormonal birth control. I’m embarking on this journey to share what I find—the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m embarking on this journey with the hope that we can prevent what happened to me from happening to other women. I’m embarking on this journey for the countless women who lost their lives by taking these drugs for birth control, for irregular periods, for acne, or the myriad other reasons for which they have been prescribed.

My role in this project includes sharing my own story, the research from my thesis, and combing through 1500 pages of congressional testimony from the 1970 hearings about birth control pills. These documents, the Nelson Pill Hearings, have been fascinating and overwhelming. And more than anything they’ve made me want to know more. I want to find out what was known about hormonal birth control back then and how the research has or hasn’t changed since. I want to know why synthetic estrogen was banned in chickens because it caused cancer in animals at the same time it was approved for women (at 100,000 times the quantity). I also want to understand why no women were allowed to testify at these hearings (they were kicked out). And I can’t wait to share what I find with you.

Like so many issues, women’s healthcare is complicated and multi-faceted. And I plan to explore all the possible strings tied up in this knot. Starting with the research from my thesis, I’ll be writing pieces about risk communication, clotting disorders, what women really know, and what they need to know. I’ll be sharing what I find in the Nelson Pill Hearings. And I’ll be investigating other women’s health issues as they come up, or as you bring them to my attention. At times I may get angry, I may get snarky, I may get overwhelmed. But I promise I will try to be as thorough, honest, and real as I can. We may be a small community—those of us who know there are far more dangers in these drugs than the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe—but we are smart and we are strong. And when we all come together to share knowledge, we are powerful. I hope that you will join me on this journey. Unlike corporations who have no problem putting a dollar value on the life of a person, I believe that if we can save just one woman from what happened to Julia, to Brittany Malone, to Erika Langhart and so many others, then all of this work will be worth it.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Related posts:

birth control, blood clots and female athletesBlood Clots, Birth Control and Female Athletes: Are We Missing Important Risk Factors?

You might be interested in

A Stroke From Hormonal Birth Control: Part 3

Published on
2921 views
Birth control and stroke part 3

When I was 28 years old, I had a massive stroke (a cerebral venous thrombosis in the sagittal sinus area) from a combination of birth control pills and a fairly common clotting disorder, Factor V Leiden. For more of this story, see Part 1 and Part 2.

Trying to Look Normal

One of my final tests in outpatient rehabilitation was to walk around town without falling down or getting lost. The day I passed that test was also the first day that I went somewhere in public by myself. It was a Subway and I stood in line, my heart pounding. I stared up at the menu to keep from looking around me, trying to ignore the sensation that everyone was staring at me. I was also desperately trying to remember how to order things, pay for things, and appear normal. In my head, I practiced ordering my sandwich over and over. I felt like if I made even a tiny mistake that everyone would be able to tell how broken I was, like they could somehow see the brain damage. I’ve never forgotten that feeling and for a long time I was afraid to tell people about the stroke, scared they would look at me differently. But really I was the one who looked at myself differently. I saw myself as broken. Like my body had failed me. And for a long time I didn’t trust my body.

Living With Fear

What no one tells you about life after something like a stroke is the ongoing fear. I’m going to be on blood thinners, which increase my risk for bleeding out, for the rest of my life. The first time I cut myself, I thought I might die. Panic overtook me and I started sobbing, a paper towel clutched to my finger, too afraid to look at the damage. When I finally peeked and found it was just a nick, I felt like an idiot. But I still avoid melons and gourds, instead buying my butternut squash pre-cut. Just in case.

The first time I had a cold, I thought my sinus headache might be another stroke. The first time I pulled a muscle, I thought I might have a DVT (deep vein thrombosis). The first time I had an asthma attack, I was scared I had a PE (pulmonary embolism). If I hit my head on something, which I’m prone to given how klutzy I am, I would wonder if I might suffer another stroke. After all, the doctors said that once having suffered a stroke, my risk for another was that much greater. At least 25-35% of stroke victims suffer a second. Recurrent strokes often have a higher rate of death and disability because parts of the brain already injured by the original stroke may not be as resilient.

Stressing About Stress- Oh, The Irony!

But those aren’t the only things that scare me. I also worry about stress. When I had the stroke, I was newly married and had moved away from my family for the first time so that my husband could attend graduate school. Before we moved, I had a challenging and exciting career, an identity, and a network of friends and colleagues in a large, diverse city. The small college town in the deep south felt like a foreign country—one where I was known only as “Josh’s wife.” When I had the stroke, I had no close friends and for the first time since I was 16 years old, I was unemployed and having no luck finding work. I was under more stress than I had ever been at that point in my life. Until now.

In the past six months, I’ve been going through a tremendously stressful period. I’ve been tested not by one of the major life stressors, but several at once. And I only recently realized that part of the overwhelming anxiety associated with these situations is the nagging fear that my body “fails” me when I am under so much stress. I’m terrified that I might have another stroke. Because now I actually know what having a stroke means. It means more fear, frustration, stress, self-doubt, identity crisis, feeling helpless, being helpless—and that’s only if you survive.

Getting Off the Blame Train

The on-going message from my doctors, armed with studies funded by the drug manufacturers, was that I was an anomaly. That what happened to me almost never happens. So I figured I must be weaker than other women. My body couldn’t handle birth control pills when millions of other women have no problem with them. At least that’s what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe.

The consequence of that line of reasoning is that I blamed myself, something I didn’t even realize until I was in a yoga class last year.

When my teacher said, “Forgive yourself for something you think you did wrong,” I wondered what that might be. Then a voice came to me very clearly. “You blame yourself for your stroke,” it said. I sat with that sentence and turned it over in my head, looking at it from all directions. I did blame myself. And I had been blaming myself for nearly 10 years.

I thought writing my thesis had helped close the chapter on what happened to me. But somehow it only reinforced the narrative that I was weak and couldn’t trust my body. Really, I had been living in fear and babying myself for nearly a decade. After class, I made my way to my car, buckled my seatbelt, and cried all the way home.

The repercussions of having a stroke at 28 caused by hormonal birth control and a common clotting disorder still affect me today, in big decisions and little ones—from switching to a new blood thinner (so I no longer have to give myself shots) to wearing a helmet while biking around my neighborhood (since I can’t really afford another brain injury). I may have to live with the fear of having another stroke and the fear of bleeding out. I may have to get my blood checked every six months, wear a medic alert bracelet, use compression socks. But I don’t have to blame myself. The stroke was not my fault. I was failed by a greedy pharmaceutical industry, a society that values profit more than human life, and an overworked and under-informed medical community.

A New Story

I’ve learned that we are the product of the stories we tell ourselves and I have been telling myself the wrong story. I was not failed by my body. I was not weak because I had a stroke. The real story is that I am strong. Unbelievably strong. My body survived a stroke. For a month! My body survived being given medication that should have killed it. My body survived being sent home from the emergency room twice, massive seizures, clots, bleeding, and brain damage. My body recovered. And I am thriving. I am not weak. In fact, I’m stronger than ever and I’m ready to finish the work that I started back in graduate school. I’m ready to stand up and fight for the health and safety of women. And I’m not alone.

These first three articles are just the beginning of my research and exploration of the dangers of hormonal birth control, as well as other women’s health topics. I hope you’ll keep coming back to learn and share what I’ve found. Because despite what the pharmaceutical companies want us to believe, we ARE strong. And we are even stronger when we work together.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Related posts:

birth control brain clotsBrain Bombs: Survivors’ Stories of Birth Control Induced Strokes Birth control induced pulmonary emboliBirth Control Induced Pulmonary Emboli: Sudden and Slow birth control side effectsHormonal Birth Control Solves Everything Right? Wrong.

You might be interested in

A Stroke from Hormonal Birth Control: Part 1

Published on
4397 views
Stroke from hormonal birth control - Kerry Gretchen

I opened my eyes and saw my husband, Josh, holding my hand, looking very serious. He was telling me that we would get through this, that even if I had to learn to walk again, that whatever it took, we would be okay. I remember thinking, “It’s okay, honey. I just have a headache.” We had been married for a year. The next time I opened my eyes Josh was leaning over me. I was on my side in the emergency room and the doctor had just asked him to hold me steady while he gave me a spinal tap to check for meningitis. Josh held me so firmly, terrified by the risks of a misplaced needle, that his arms were shaking from the strain. I tried to tell him, “Don’t worry about holding me. I can’t move anyway.” I had lost the use of my limbs hours before, maybe even days. And now it seemed my power of speech was gone, as well.

The headache had started a month earlier. I remember exactly when because it woke me in the middle of night and I had never had that happen before. We were visiting friends in New York right before Christmas. I got up and took some ibuprofen and didn’t give it much more thought. But it never really went away. I saw a chiropractor. I took more ibuprofen. I checked out a book on meditation. By the time I saw a gynecologist, I also had an unexplainable pain in my left thigh. The gynecologist told me the pain in my leg was probably just a muscle strain and she prescribed Imitrex for the headache, a migraine medication that shrinks the blood vessels in the brain.

The migraine medication made the headache go from dull and persistent to unbearable. I visited a health clinic where the doctor suggested an appointment with a neurologist the following week. That night my left arm started to go numb. I called a local pharmacist who said it might be my birth control pills. That’s crazy, I thought. I’ve been on them for 10 years. I slept on the couch because I couldn’t bear the thought of having to move to the bedroom. The music that had been on the television roared in my head like it had been trapped there on repeat. The next day I called the health center again and they told me to go to the emergency room.

Over the course of the next two days I would take 3 ambulance rides, be sent home from the emergency room twice, begin to lose all control of my body, and be given a very stern lecture by a nurse who thought I needed to learn how to “manage my stress.”

The spinal tap in the emergency room was not the first time Josh had to hold me down. Earlier that day, he tried to restrain me while my body thrashed wildly. During the seizure, I told myself that if I just calmed down, it would stop. It must all be in my head since the doctors said it was just a “tension headache.” We locked eyes, both of us terrified of what was happening to me. When the shaking finally subsided, he asked me if he should call 911. Again. All I could do was nod.

I did not have meningitis. There were blood clots in my brain and because they had not been treated right away, one of the veins in my head had burst and was bleeding. I was having a massive stroke.

Later, Josh would tell me about overhearing the neurologist and the neurosurgeon arguing. The neurologist thought they should operate. The neurosurgeon thought it was too risky. Neither wanted to be there. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. day. (I have since learned never to get sick on a holiday weekend.) In the end, they didn’t operate. I don’t remember exactly when they told me that I had had a stroke. But I know I had no understanding of what that meant. (I find that even now, ten years later, I am still learning.) As far as I knew, that was something that happened to old people. I was 28 years old.

At some point, they told me that I had a clotting disorder and that this genetic anomaly coupled with the hormones in my birth control had caused my stroke. This wouldn’t mean much to me until after I learned how to walk again, do math again, shave my own armpits again.

Not long after I was discharged from the hospital, I had an allergic reaction to the anti-seizure medication. I returned to the emergency room at the request of my neurologist. This time they immediately took me to an examination room. When the doctor walked in, the same doctor who had finally diagnosed my stroke, he said, “I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

That statement stayed with me throughout my recovery. Because though intellectually I understood that the stroke could have killed me, I never really understood the gravity of the situation until he said that to me. And it made me begin to really consider what happened to me and why.

I was first prescribed birth control pills at the university health clinic my freshman year of college. I wasn’t even sexually active at the time, it just seemed like a rite of passage. Why did no one tell me about the dangers of the pill? I wondered. And why didn’t anyone tell me that I could have a clotting disorder without knowing it? How many other women have this clotting disorder? How many other women have had blood clots? How many have actually died from hormonal birth control? Throughout my recovery, I struggled with these questions. Eventually, I even tried to answer some of these questions with my master’s thesis. For more on my recovery and thesis work, see Part 2 of A Stroke from Hormonal Birth Control.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

Related posts:

testing for clotting disordersWhy Aren’t Women Tested for Factor V Leiden and Other Clotting Disorders? birth control brain clotsBrain Bombs: Survivors’ Stories of Birth Control Induced Strokes Spin doctor birth controlThe Spin Doctor’s Prescription for Birth Control

You might be interested in

Brain Grenade: Hormonal Contraceptives, Migraine and Stroke

Published on
3421 views
brain grenade - contraceptives-migraine-stroke

On Sunday, April 14, 2013 I woke up with a headache.

This wasn’t unusual for me; I had battled chronic headaches and occasional migraines for over ten years. I had tried almost every available solution, but never found relief.

This headache was worse than normal, but since I had already made plans with my dad to hike the Manitou Springs Incline that day, I resorted to my usual option; suck it up, smile, and push through the pain. I got to my dad’s house and he could see in my eyes that my headache was getting worse. He offered up the option to go to Barnes & Noble, get a latte at Starbucks and look through travel magazines instead. I conceded because I was in pain, and also because this was another one of my favorite ways to spend time with him.

While flipping through pages of Conde Nast’s Traveler magazine with a chai tea latte in my hand, I felt a pain that I will not soon forget strike through my right eye and up through my skull. It felt like a white hot bolt of lightning electrocuting my brain.

For Harry Potter fans out there, my Voldemort was close.

Hunched over in pain and grasping my head, my dad rushed me over to the nearest chair. The excruciating pain subsided, but left me really scared. That had never happened before. I told him that I needed to go home and find some migraine medication to take before it got worse. He offered to drive me home, but being as stubborn as I am, I told him I’d be fine driving myself. There were a few times on the drive back that my vision was altered, but that’s not something I wanted to admit to anyone, even myself.

Thinking it was just a severe migraine, I took a prescription migraine medication called Frova, crawled into bed and switched on Netflix…waiting for it to pass.

It never did. It only got worse…

I called in sick to work the next day and continued lying in bed with inadequate pain killers and trashy TV. I didn’t tell anyone about my lightning bolt pain or altered vision because I didn’t want to admit it was worse than my typical migraines. However, that afternoon the pain was so bad that I decided to go to the ER.

The ER staff put me in a dark room with a warm blanket and a lot of narcotics. That usually does the trick. Morphine and anti-nausea injections are the go-to solution for migraines. Adequately doped up, my mom and stepdad took me back home so the morphine hibernation could kick in and knock me — and my migraine — out cold.

Hours of drugged and dreamless sleep passed, and I woke up only to increased pain and foggy consciousness, coupled with dehydration and weakness from skipping meals.

Without any resistance or say in the matter, my parents took me back to the ER the next day. The doctors decided that a CT scan was the next step in figuring out my pain. I barely remember getting off my hospital bed and onto the CT table for the scan.

In addition to the CT scan and more narcotics, they also injected the base of my skull with a numbing agent like Novocain. Let me tell you, no matter how drugged and doped up you are from days of a steady stream of narcotics, hearing a needle and its contents being injected into the base of your skull right next to your ear, will wake you up with a searing certainty.

Back home I went, praying that this drug slumber would finally do the trick. Three more days passed without any relief; the pain didn’t let up, no matter how much medication my body consumed. Eventually, I couldn’t even keep food or water down without instantly getting sick. I couldn’t stand up without holding onto a wall or piece of furniture.

My worried parents called their primary care physician and explained the situation. I got an appointment with her that day and walked into her office like a brainless zombie. At that point, being a brainless zombie sounded quite appealing. The doctor asked my mom a few questions while I looked blankly at the wall. She scheduled an emergency MRI and within one hour, I was wearing an ugly medical gown lying inside a noisy, confining white tube as a machine snapped a picture of my brain.

We went back home and not long after I got settled on the couch with some of my mom’s chicken noodle soup, I received a call from the Radiologist telling me that I had a Cerebral Sinus Venous Thrombosis. (Say that five times fast!) It was located in my sagital sinus. In layman’s terms, I had a blood clot in my brain.

{A blood clot in my brain}

I was instructed to get up immediately and go directly to the hospital in downtown Colorado Springs. The radiologist already called and they were expecting me. Funny to think that I had reservations at a hospital. I had to go to the hospital downtown because that’s where the best brain surgeons in the city were. “Just in case something ‘bad’ were to happen,” the nurse said, matter-of-factly.

Despite that dramatic comment and the reality-shifting diagnosis, I was very calm. I thanked her, hung up and looked at my parents, explaining what I had just heard. I was relieved that I finally had an answer to what was causing this pain. My unrelenting lightning bolt brain pain might be coming to an end!

Everything started moving very quickly. My parents mobilized with military-like precision…feeding the dog, calling my grandparents, texting my brother, packing an overnight bag for me, wrapping me in a blanket and putting me in the car.

We got to the ER and I walked directly into a room they had waiting for me. VIP status baby! 😉 A very handsome blonde doctor came in and explained that I needed to have another MRI with contrast this time so they could see the blood clot in more detail. This meant that I needed to get a special dye injected in my veins so they could see exactly where the clot was located.

A hot male nurse came in to the room and stuck a toothpick-sized needle in the biggest vein in the crease of my right arm. Of course McDreamy & McSteamy had to be my doctor and nurse while I looked like a brainless zombie with unwashed hair, zero makeup and hairy legs.

But I guess life isn’t an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

I was wheeled up to a room on the fourth floor of the hospital, where I was greeted by a sweet RN who hooked up a large bag of fluid to the IV tube in my right arm and told me that I would be on a heavy dose of Heparin, a blood thinning medication that would help reduce the size of the clot in my head.

As I was slowly adjusting to the sterile smell of my hospital room, the beeping machines connected to my bed, and the strange reality of being in the hospital, a doctor came in to explain what was happening.

Based on my age (I had turned 28 two months prior), coupled with the fact that I was a physically fit, non-smoker, the only viable reason why I was sitting in this room with a clot in my head was because of the birth control that I was currently taking. This was happening because I switched my birth control method almost four months prior from the oral contraceptive, Yaz, to the vaginal ring, Nuvaring.

And the reason why I switched four months earlier? I heard commercials on TV about women who were hurt using Yaz/Yasmin and how they could be eligible for compensation in class-action lawsuits. I did NOT want to be one of those women, so I thought I was being smart and safe.

Oh the irony…

I had to immediately remove the Nuvaring and was told by my doctor I would never again be allowed to use hormonal contraceptive methods again. My future pregnancies may even be high-risk and I would have to be heavily monitored and put on a blood thinner called Lovenox once I got pregnant. She told me that I would have to stay in the hospital for five more days while they pumped a high-dose of Heparin through my veins to prevent further clotting or a possible stroke. I would then go on an oral blood thinner named Coumadin for six months once I got out of the hospital to further shrink the clot. No surgery would be needed, thank God.

The next five days were filled with the highs of family and friends visiting, sending flowers and showing love, the lows of self-pity, frustration and cabin fever, as well as the strange experiences that naturally occur from staying in a hospital room for that long.

One of strangest had to be sleeping on a bed that was meant for someone who was more at risk for bed sores than I was. The bed was constantly shifting my weight around by filling with air in different places. It was like an air mattress pump would come on every few minutes, making it practically impossible to sleep. Once I did finally go to sleep (with the help of Ambien) a nurse would come in and wake me up every four hours to check my blood levels. I would hide from the bright lights underneath my blanket while she poked my fingertips and squeezed blood into vials.

Showering was a whole other story. My room didn’t have a shower, so my nurse told me I could use one that was down the hall. I rolled my IV stand down the hallway, only to find basically a broom closet with an RV-sized shower in it. I had to hold my right arm out of the shower because my IV couldn’t get wet. All I wanted to do was shave my legs, but razors were a definitely no-no with blood as thin as mine.

While the list of repercussions of being on Nuvaring for less than four months continued to grow, so did my gratitude for finding this clot when I did.

I know many women were not as lucky as I was and suffered through strokes and long-term health defeats. Some women even tragically lost their lives.

I made it through the following six months with as much grace as I could muster. But there definitely were times when I was annoyed that I had to wear an ugly medical alert bracelet in case of emergencies, that I was covered in bruises from my blood being so thin, and that I had to go to the Coumadin clinic every week to get my finger pricked to check my blood levels. I felt defeated and ashamed as my body awkwardly readjusted to getting off hormonal birth control by gaining weight and breaking out in acne that I thought I had happily left back in 8th grade. Even now, I still get worried and anxious when thinking about what I’ll have to go through once I get pregnant.

But even with all of that, I count my lucky stars that this is in the past, that I’m healthy and happy, and that I can share my story.

I want women to think through their options, know the risks of Yaz, Nuvaring, and other forms of hormonal contraceptives, and realize there are other ways of taking care of themselves and their family.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

This story is one of a series about women who have developed blood clots while using hormonal contraception. These articles are part of the Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots, a research project to help women gauge their actual risk with hormonal birth control. For more information, or to participate click here.

Related posts:

migraines and birth controlMigraines and Birth Control: A Neglected Stop Sign birth control brain clotsBrain Bombs: Survivors’ Stories of Birth Control Induced Strokes No knowingHormonal Contraceptives: Do We Really Know What We Think We Know?

You might be interested in

1 2