My Mirena Experience

I am a 32 year old mother of one. I had Mirena inserted in May 2003. I had a lot of cramping at first and some bleeding nothing really heavy. I actually thought it was a great help to me. I didn't need to worry about birth control and wouldn't need to worry about it for 5 years. That was wonderful. I was engaged and we weren't ready to have a child at that time. I had a son that was 7 (he's 12 now). I have recommended this product to friends and family. I even convinced my sister to get this IUD after her daughter was born 4 months ago because it had been so successful for my husband and me.

In the past few months I noticed I was nauseated almost everyday for about 2 to 3 months. Before and after eating, just about all the time. I didn’t want to eat some days and when I did, I couldn’t even eat half the food on my plate. Everyone’s first question was always, “Are you pregnant?” Of course my response was always no of course not. I have an IUD. I can’t be pregnant. I didn't have any symptoms of being pregnant other than nausea and occasional mood swings, and occasional pain in my left side near my ovaries. I thought I was worried something was seriously wrong when I heard and read people with cancer experience problems like that. I made an appointment with my regular doctor (11/12/07) and my GYN (12/04/07). I thought something was wrong with my stomach. My regular doctor gave me Antibiotics and meds for heartburn/indigestion (which helped the nausea some, but it did return after the Antibiotics were all taken) and said I had an infection. He did blood work, took urine tests, and even sent me for an abdominal CT scan. All of which came back normal, but I was still having the nausea. My doctor called in a prescription for phenagin(sp) and recommended I see a GI specialist. That appointment is scheduled for December 20, 2007. I was starting to feel like a hypochondriac. Besides the nausea, I was always on the verge of tears. I would read a book, hear something on the radio and wanted to burst out in tears. I felt so stupid. Everybody I talked to about it told me I was just probably depressed. But the problem was I didn’t feel depressed. I’ve battled Depression before. I was on meds for Depression for years. I didn’t feel the same way as I did then. There were days I felt like I was just waiting to die. Not that I wanted to die, but I felt I was going to die. All I wanted to do was sleep and I was always tired. My body was super sensitive to pain, my head, arms, everywhere. My husband and I rarely had sex, maybe once every 2 to 3 months if he was lucky. I felt it was more like I needed to do it for him because every time he tried I wasn’t in the mood or wasn’t feeling well, which I attributed to the 150 lb. weight gain I have had over the last 5 years.

My appointment with the GYN (12/4/07) was after all the other tests my regular doctor had done. This appointment was mainly for a yearly pap smear and this was a new doctor I went in to see. I didn’t mention the problems with my stomach I was having because my regular doctor told me he felt the problems I was having with my stomach weren’t related to the pains in my pelvic area. My IUD needed to come out in March 2008. Well I decided since I was there and my husband had an appointment to have a vasectomy in the coming months, I would ask the doctor if she could remove the IUD, so I didn’t need to make a return appointment. I told her about the pain I was having in my side near my ovaries. She scheduled a pelvic ultrasound to rule out any problems. This also came back normal.

I got home that night after seeing the GYN and noticed I was feeling better. I was kind of in shock because I thought I was imagining things. It has been just over a week since I had the Mirena removed. I decided to do some searching online to see what I could expect after having it removed. Such as how long before my menstrual cycle would return to normal. At first I couldn’t find anything. All the information I found was what to expect after insertion of the IUD. Well I changed my search terms I was amazed at what I found. I stumbled onto this blog site,
//www.curezone.org.
I found tons of women having some of the same problems I was having. Some I didn’t even realize was a problem for other people or that could be associated with side effects of the Mirena. I was so mad when I saw some of this stuff. Why didn’t anybody tell us this would happen or was a possibility? I surly wouldn’t have recommended this product to my friends, let alone my sister, if I had known this type of stuff was going to happen to me.

Now here I am a week after Mirena removed, and the nausea is just about completely gone, and I feel so much better. I’m not having as many of the problems I was having before. I don’t feel like I’m going to die anymore. I am still tired all the time, but I guess that must be part of being 200 lbs overweight, most of which I gained while having the Mirena. I never would have thought this would cause me any problems like I had. I hope if anything comes of this, that others will be more aware of the side effects and be more informed before having an IUD inserted. I was told by my doctor that the hormones would stay within my uterus. I chose the IUD because I had been on birth control pills, the depo shots, and several other methods of birth control. I did a lot of research before deciding on this method. Apparently, I didn’t do enough because as it turns out, although it kept me from getting pregnant, it caused a great many other problems for me that I didn’t need to have. Missing days of work because my stomach was sick, and the doctor bills trying to find out what was wrong with me. In the end it came back to just having that little thing removed from my body.

And as I read more and more comments on this page, I have to wonder about some of the stuff that has happened in the last 4 1/2 years. My doctor was so sure I had corpal tunnel syndrome, and sent me to a neurologist. Numbness in both arms, occasionally in my legs too. He did tests to check for CTS but nothing was founded and he could never explain the numbness in my arms, hands, legs and feet. He gave me meds to help with nerve pain and the numbness went away. I have to wonder now if that was caused by Mirena with some of the comments I have seen. Also headaches, mood swings, loss of sex drive (was a nympho before, thought it was just marriage, and age, but since Mirena has been removed, that's all I wanna do is have sex with my husband), being mad @ my husband and family for no apparent reason. I have threatened divorce about 8 times in the last 2 years of our marriage over stuff that didn't seem to make sense. I was telling my husband some of the stuff I have read recently and he said it all sounds so familiar to him.
Tweet