First of all I want to thank you for having this forum. I thought I was going crazy and no one would believe me (aside from my husband) that the IUD was the cause of my problems.

Back in Sept 2009 I was taken off birth control due to my age (49)to see if I had entered menopause. I started it for heavy bleeding and at the end for birth control for my second marriage. At that time I had the IUD inserted on the advice of my doctor as it has no estrogen in it which may cause me Breast Cancer at my age. She wanted to see what my true hormone levels were to evaluate my progress into menopause. On thanksgiving in Nov I had a small episode of sharp pain in my lower back that lasted about 10 days and then went away. I was doing a lot of international travel and blamed it on that. I came back from Italy on Dec 13 and had the same thing happen the next day again - just much worse. I went to my doctor and chiropractor and was told I had a slipped disc. With the help of the chiropractor the acute pain got controlled but it just never felt right. within 3 weeks in January I started having pains between my shoulder blades and then neck. Now it is all the way up to my head. My joints continue to hurt - especially my knees and hips. Sometimes my hands are just hurting and I can't open anything anymore. In the meantime, many chiropractor visits and I am taking everything in the world as I was told it may be Arthritis - from MSM to Glucosamine to large doses of Vitamin C, etc...... and nothing made a difference. I just would not heal. In the meantime my obgyn has put me back on bio-identical Estrogen and Progesterone. Still no difference. So - the only other change was this IUD. It just did not make sense - I am an active, slender person in great shape (doing triathalons before this) and probably getting more out of shape every day as I cannot go to the gym. Everytime I do any kind of exercise I feel worse the next day. I have learned to manage the pain with Epsom Salt baths, and homeopathic help (Arnica or Traumeel really helps), but this is no life. I have to travel to Europe from work and the thought of sitting on a plane for 9 hours is terrifying. I also still cannot pick up anything heavy.

Anyway - sorry for being so long. I am calling my doctor first thing in the morning and this thing is coming out NOW. Thank you for hearing my story in some of yours - I certainly saw two different side effect impacts here: 1) women that did not agree with the progesterone and had almost menopause like symptoms and 2) women where the body is trying to attack the IUD and is attacking everything else. I am assuming next would be headaches, jaw pain and heart pulpatations - no thank you. Hopefully it is not too late to get this out without long term side effects. I will let you know. I am hopeful that my bleeding will not be excessive anymore (at my age) and I will have my hormone levels checked to see about the chance of pregnancy.

Thank you for giving me the confirmation that I was right.