I am 26 years old, and I had the Essure procedure done in February of 2013. I chose to sterilize without having any children. The doctor assured me that Essure was a great procedure, minimal risk, minimal pain, back on my feet the next day, etc. I chose to go with this procedure because my job refused to let me use any sick time to have a tubal done. I had been given pills prior to the procedure, and I was cognitively impaired the entire time I was taking them. I was a teller, and I suddenly couldn’t balance my drawer or handle customer transactions well. It was like being in a fog.
When I arrived to have my procedure done on a Friday morning, I was given a few pills and a shot. My husband was not allowed in the room for the procedure, but it seemed to go okay. It felt like a really bad period cramp with the coils went in, but that was what I had expected. I went home and tried to sleep, but the pain was so intense that I kept waking up despite all the medicine I had been given. The bleeding also hadn’t stopped, and I was filling a long/heavy pad every two hours. I was told by an on-call doctor that as long as I wasn’t fill a pad an hour, I was fine, but he didn’t seem to take into account I wasn’t using a regular absorption pad. He did ask if I had taken an pain medicine that should have been prescribed to me by the doctor who did the procedure, but I hadn’t been given any. Since it was a weekend, I had to wait until the following Monday to go back and get something for the pain.
The bleeding continued for another two weeks, and the pain was horrible. It eventually subsided only to come back en force around my next period. Using a Diva cup and popping some over-the-counter pain killers helped enough that I could still work.
I then went in for my dye test, being told that any pain I might experience would be similar to a period cramp. That test caused me to experience the worst pain I had ever had in my entire life. I was nearly vomiting, and I could do nothing but scream and beg them to stop. My muscles ached from gripping the table so hard. Before I could moved, I was told I had to leave the room so that they could prep it for another patient. My husband practically had to carry me to the nearest bathroom. I litterally wanted to kill myself to get out of the pain. I continued to bleed from this for several days. It wasn’t until much later that I was told by another doctor that the dye test performed for Essure required a much higher than normal amount of pressure to ‘ensure the tubes are blocked,’ so it nearly always causes crippling pain.
After the dye test, the cramping right before my period began to worsen. I’d be mid-conversation and suddenly gasp, double over, and try to breathe as the sharp, stabbing pain passed. This would happen every couple of minutes for about half an hour and then vanish for a few hours before returning in lessening intervals until the pain became a constant for the first couple of days of my period. With each period, the pain started sooner and stayed longer so that now I am in constant pain, with the sharp, stabbing, dibilitating pain hanging around for my entire menstration. Within the past couple of months, too, I have begun experiencing similar stabbing pain whenever I become aroused.
My doctor has pretty much decided to have me undergo surgery to remove the Essure, which would include removing at least the tubes, if not more. I’m 26 and shouldn’t even been having to talk about removing anything, much less things related to my reproductive organs.
No one should ever get this procedure. If it were all that great, then no one would have to lie and conceal so much about it. I wasn’t even told that it was made of nickel, nor was that information in any of the pamphlets I received, and I have a nickel allergy. I wasn’t told that I would possibly bleed for weeks afterwards. I wasn’t told that the dye test would cause excrutiating pain. I wasn’t told that I could possibly be in pain for the rest of my life. I wasn’t told that I could end up having parts of myself surgically removed because of this procedure.