Last March, at the age of 37, I knew that I wasn’t wanting to have more children. I had been on the pill for 15 years and felt like it was time for something more permanent. I went to see an OB/GYN in the same office as the nurse practioner that had treated me for the past 5 years. Within mere minutes of discussion, a quick internal exam was performed and the Essure procedure was scheduled.
I showed up the morning of my procedure with a friend and was whisked into the office surgical suite while the friend was placed in a waiting room next to the physician’s office. I thought this was going to be a quick and painless procedure until the physician informed me he accidently perforated my uterus while trying to insert the first coil. Apparently, there was a lot of scar tissue in my utuerus from my previous c-section that he was unaware of. So was I; but he is the doctor so shouldn’t he have known? Especially after he performed an internal exam.
Apparently, the doctor was unaware my friend was sitting in the next room when he returned to his office and had a conversation with another doctor in his practice. As my friend phrased it ‘that doctor is scared’. The doctor came back in to see me and acted like this was no big deal. They kept me in the office to ‘recover’ for about an hour or two and then sent me home with a valium. The physician informed me that he was going out of town after the practice closed that afternoon but that another doctor was on call so if I experienced any discomfort to call.
Around 3 PM I woke up in EXCRUIATING pain. It hurt so bad that I couldn’t catch my breath even. I called the doctor’s office and the nurse told me that she would get back to me. She called me a few minutes later and told me that she couldn’t get ahold of the on-call doctor and to head to the emergency room. (I was later informed that the on-call doctor had ‘forgot’ he was on call and took a weekend trip to Miami.)
I arrived at the emergency room around 5 PM and spent the next 3 hours trying to convince the staff that I was NOT pregnant. It seemed that nobody there had even heard of Essure and we explained over and over what had happened in the doctor’s office but could not make them understand that I knew what I was talking about. 2 pregnancy tests later (blood and urine) the hospital ob/gyn came to see me. He too was skeptical of my story but atleast he was aware of what Essure was. I was sent for ultrasounds around 1 AM and was FINALLY provided a painkiller.
I proceeded to spend 3 days in the hospital and then the next week and a half at home recuperating. The physician that ‘performed’ the Essure procedure apologized repeatedly when I saw him in his office. He promised me free oral contraceptives for as long as he remained in practice but honestly, I knew that I wanted a new OB/GYN and only got the contraceptives from him for a few months.
Interesting tid bit…I returned to the office about 6 months later to see about a tubal ligation to be performed by a different physician in his office and they could find NO records in my file related to the procedure. Coincidence?