My name is Haley. I am the mother of three kids. After my youngest was born in 2008, I let my ex talk me into getting birth control. We couldn’t afford the IUD because my insurance wouldn’t cover it, so I talked to my OB about getting my tubes tied. They told me about this amazing procedure called Essure. They told me it was only moderately painful and it was a great alternative to surgically getting your tubes tied because you don’t have to stay in a hospital, they do it right in the office and I would go home that day. None of the brochures said anything about side effects and after talking about it to my ex, who was adamant about not having any more children, I decided to go ahead and do it. It was the worst mistake ever. When I got to the office, I was given 2 Valium and a 2.5 mg Percoset. I had very little experience with prescription medication other than antibiotics, so I trusted the doctor knew what he was doing and ignored the alarm bells ringing in my brain. The procedure itself was like a nightmare. It was torture. It hurt so much, it was like my body froze up. I couldn’t move or talk, I just lay there and endured. When it was over I put my hands to my face and realized tears had been streaming down my cheeks and I hadn’t even noticed. I left the office feeling violated. I felt traumatized and to this day have issues being in a doctor’s office by myself. During a follow up appointment, one of the nurses asked me how I felt the procedure had gone and when I told her that if I knew how much it was going to hurt I wouldn’t have done it, she told me that she thought it couldn’t have been that bad because ‘most women scream bloody murder’. The implications of that statement still enrage me. A few weeks after that my periods started getting wonky. They were irregular and when they came they were much heavier than they were before. I told myself it was just my body adjusting. Then in 2010, after my ex and I broke up, I started bleeding and didn’t stop for 3 months. When it finally got to the point when I realized it wasn’t going to stop, I found another OB and made an appointment. They put me on hormones which did help to even everything out, but they were shocked when I told them about what I had experienced. That doctor told me that he heavily sedated his patients because it is so extremely painful and he would have thought the doctor I had gone to would have done the same thing. But the periods themselves were more or less back to normal until about 5 months ago when I started bleeding continuously again, only this time it was much worse. There were clots 3 or 4 inches long- I was soaking tampons and then overflowing my pad about four times a day. There were blood stains on my sheets every night and multiple stains on my mattress every morning. And then one night blood just gushed down my legs and it scared me so badly I went to the emergency room. The doctor there did a pelvic exam and told me it sounded like I had had a miscarriage and that my uterus was open. She advised me to see an OB which I have been trying to do, but my job doesn’t provide insurance and getting medicaid is a process. The thought that I may have been pregnant made me question how effective the Essure procedure was, so I started doing some research regarding my symptoms and was upset at the sheer number of people who had had to go through similar things. I felt validation to an extent, but that doctors would knowingly allow women to go through this put a huge dent in my trust of modern medicines. Today, my periods are more regular, but they are still extremely heavy. I have stopped using tampons as they are pointless and have to use the thickest pads I can find so I can make it through a shift at work without bleeding all over myself when my period is on. My youngest child is almost 7 now. I have been dealing with these issues for years. I am 35 and feel like my body is falling apart. If I had known then what I know now, if I had been informed that I would have to deal with pain and bleeding like a stuck pig and possibly losing children that I was told would never be conceived- my response to this ‘amazing’ procedure would have been very, very different. I’m glad that more light has been shed regarding this and my heart goes out to all of these brave women coming forward with their stories. It helps to know I am not alone and thank you Erin for championing this cause. If I have to live like this the rest of my life, at least I know someone is fighting to make sure nobody else has to.
Haley’s Story
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