Enrage symptoms and conditions

After 2 years and 7 months, I had my Mirena removed on 5/4. I had it inserted 3 months after the birth of my first child in 2006. At the time, it seemed like my best option due to problems I’d had with the Pill. I was on the Pill for 6 years, the first year or 2 weren’t too bad, but things gradually got worse. Because it was so gradual, it took me years to realize the cause of my problems. My blood pressure slowly got higher, my heart would often race, and I had anxiety and mini-panic attacks to the point where I never wanted to go anywhere. (My heart rate got up to 160 while waiting for the Dr during an appointment and my blood pressure was up to ~145/99) I also started getting migraines that got more and more frequent. I had an EKG and stress test and everything came back normal. I stopped taking the Pill and within a couple months felt a million times better and my BP went back to normal. I had no idea how much it had affected me and it still makes me sick to think of the years I lost because I felt so awful. I didn’t take anything for 6 months before we started trying to get pregnant and they were the best months in a very long time.

After I got Mirena, I thought it was great. I bled for about 2 months, then never really had periods after that (just some occasionally spotting). Three months after it was inserted, I lost the final 10 pounds of baby weight just by dieting. If I was emotional or moody during the first year, I just thought it was my hormones after having a baby. Slowly over time, I began to get more and more irritable. Everything and anything would enrage me. Rage is the best word for it. It would take a split second for me to fly off the handle. Everything irritated me, particularly anything my husband did. The more it happened, the worse it got and I began to worry if I would eventually lose control completely. Meanwhile, I slowly lost my desire to do anything. I’ve never been a big housekeeper, but our house has become a wreck and I have to force myself to get things down when people are coming over. If it weren’t for family coming to visit frequently, we’d really be living in a mess. I just never feel like doing anything and I’ve lost my passion for everything.

I’ve always had bad skin and have taken everything made for acne, including Accutane. My skin was the best it’s ever been the weeks after my son was born. Over the past 2.5 years, it gotten worse and now it’s as bad as it’s ever been. As my 30th birthday approached, I began to wonder if I’d have zits when I’m 70, then began wondering if the IUD might be causing it.

Also in the past year, I have begun to struggle with my weight. It had slowly started to creep up even though my diet hadn’t really changed. The past 6 months have been the worst. I constantly have a desire to eat and crave anything sugary which I’m sure has contributed to my weight gain. I’ve tried dieting and exercising more than ever before and couldn’t lose anything. Then I gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks. If I diet and workout, my weight stays the same – if I eat normally, I gain weight, just as many others here have mentioned. I’d say 80-90% of my excess weight is on my stomach and I’ve been asked twice in the last 6 months by strangers about being pregnant. I now weigh what I did when I was 7-8 months pregnant (25lbs over my pre-preg weight) and I look 6-7 months preg.

All of these issues have gradually gotten worse over time, but significantly so in the past 6 months. My fits of rage began to scare me and I would feel like my head and/or chest were going to explode when I would yell. I started to realize from my previous experience with the Pill that my blood pressure was going up again. I had also begun to get migraines again which I hadn’t had since the Pill. Then I began to feel like I was living in a depression medicine commercial. I’ve never dealt with depression before even when my husband was gone for months at a time in the Navy. Yet all the sudden I felt like I could check off all the symptoms for depression. I started having irrational and scary thoughts that I had no control over and they would go as quickly as they came. I began to get frightened because I felt like I had no control over myself, my thoughts, or my emotions. For whatever reason, I decided to look up Mirena and depression and couldn’t believe what I found - pages and pages of people describing exactly how I felt with all the same symptoms. I had been contemplating it anyway, but I decided then that I was going to get it removed. I went to the doctor and my blood pressure was higher than I expected. She gave me BP meds and offered me meds for everything else. I got the impression that she probably thought I was blaming too much on the Mirena. I would have agreed if not for my experiences on the Pill. She had never removed one, so she referred me to an OB/GYN. They couldn’t see me for over a month and there was no way I could wait that long because I knew it would take a while for my body to get back to normal. Amazingly, I found someone who got me in 4 days later. I was so excited! As everyone says, it’s a lot easier coming out than going in – just a pinch that lasts a second. So far, I haven’t noticed a huge difference (it’s been about 3 days). I felt less bloated the second day, but it seems to have come back a little yesterday. I have been very thirsty since the evening after I got it removed and have been peeing as much as I did when I was pregnant. I slowly feel like my desire to constantly eat is going away and I am not craving sugar as much.

I also wanted to mention, I started the blood pressure meds the day after I got them. I will say that it has helped my irritability a little and I no longer feel like I’m going to explode when I get angry. Now that the IUD is gone, I’m sure it will go back to normal on its own in month or 2. It’s frustrating because I got Mirena because of my BP problems on the pill. I was under the impression that there wouldn’t be any side effects and now I’m back to where I was when I stopped the Pill. I lost several good years with my husband because of the Pill and now I’ve lost almost 3 more and the first 3 years of my son’s life because of this stupid IUD. If it weren’t for our son, I don’t know that our marriage would have survived the last 3 years. I just pray that I will get back to being me and will be able to be the mother that my son deserves.

A few other side effects I’ve noticed after reading all these posts that may also be related are greasy hair and skin, hair loss, facial hair, memory loss/lack of concentration, and the strange odors and various infections that others have mentioned. I used to not be able to wrap my fingers around my ponytail. Now I can almost wrap them around twice. Like most of the other side effects, I blamed it on aging, stress, etc. I’m interested to see if it starts coming back now.

I know this is a really long post, but I wanted to include as much info as possible in case it might help someone else. I probably would have gotten it out sooner, but I didn’t think there were any side effects. For now, I am not going to take anything. I want to know whether the side effects go away and not have to worry if something is caused by a new birth control. I may try something else in 6 months or so, but we’ll see. My husband doesn’t want me to take anything ever again, but I really don’t want to get pregnant. I don’t think I want any more kids, but I’m only 30 and not ready to do anything permanent yet. My new OB/GYN mentioned Implantation, which uses a different hormone, but I don’t have much faith that it won’t have the same effects. I will probably just try different pills and keep an eye on my blood pressure. I plan to post updates when I can to let you know if things get better. I hope that my story helps someone else.