Family medicine symptoms and conditions

I never thought I would ever be posting my experience with BC but I think this could be useful to other women worldwide. I have been using Yasmin now for a year and a half and I agree with everyone here at the beginning I felt great, beautiful skin, controlled short term periods, stable weight. My body changed in all the right places. My breast turned a cup larger (I was a 34B) my buttocks got larger and rounder. My boyfriend was enjoying the changes as much as I was!! I thought this was the perfect pill for me and I actually recommend it to all my friends. Things started changing for me about three months ago. I started to feel tired, I use to work out 5 times a week now I can't even work out one. My eyesight started to change, I started getting cramps in my legs at night, my legs started feeling heavy as if I was losing circulation, fast heartbeat, and the occasional migraine to top it all of. Then I found the commercial about the lawsuit on TV and I panicked!! I googled the lawsuit and I found this websi

te and after reading everything here I went straight to my Dr. this afternoon with all my side effects. I am 39 now 18 on diferent types of BC and up until now I have been a very healthy and active person. When I read everything here I was decided to get off thie pill inmediately. But here goes what my Dr. said: (I trust his opinons because he is a friend and has been my obgyn for the last 15 years) " first Yasmin is the best hormone BC on the market, very women has different side effects and giving me another pill wouldn't solve my problem. I could actually get worse. He gave my the option of going of the pills but asked me if I was ready for all the changes that would bring. Weight gain, acne, anxiety, depression etc. Another option he suggested I try was taking an antioxidant complex, omega 3, and lecithin. All natural supplements which he firmly believes will make me feel much better, help my circulation, and minimize the side effects. I will start this treatment tomorrow and stay on the Yazmin for at least another month. PS. My health is in perfect conditions after blood tests and sonograms. thank God!! I will keep everyone posted on my progress. And I hope this is useful to all you ladies. God bless!

Ladies, thank you for all of your posts. I now know that I am not crazy! I am 32 and was on the pill for the past 3 years since my last child was born. I went off the pill and had the mirena inserted in February 2008. I had a few friends that had it who raved about how much they loved it. I talked with my gyn and it sounded like a good fit for me. In the first month that it was inserted I had to call the on call gynecologist at night or on weekends because I was having such sharp pains in my pelvic area. It would stop me in my tracks, I would lose my breath, and couldn't move. I went in to the office twice in the first month because I was just not feeling right about the way things were going. My doc assured me it was all normal and that I had to give it a few more months. I did have random spotting/periods for the first 3 months, which was annoying, but bearable. In June I had an ovarian cyst rupture and the pain was so bad I could have sworn I was in labor. I went to the ER and they found that one had ruptured but there was another one that was almost 5 cm in diameter. Subsequent ultrasounds showed that I did have a steady cycle of ovarian cysts, but they were small. In the meantime I had trouble sleeping, was flying off the handle for silly things, and just felt completely out of control. I talked to my new family medicine doctor (a woman) and she told me that she felt that my body was going into a semi-menopausal state because of the lack of estrogen in my body. The solution was to put me on an estrogen patch for 3-6 months to see if it helped. I was on the fence about the patch, but knew I had to do something to help me get some sleep again and to calm down. The patch worked quickly and within a week I was feeling calmer, sleeping through the night again. In the meantime I have crazy acne that just seemed to appear from no where. I'm not sure if it's the estrogen patch, the iud, or a combination of them both. My face is broken out everywhere, all the time. My hair has also changed. It's been straight my whole life. Super straight, now waves or curls. Now all of the sudden I have frizzy, wavy hair that is thinning and just looks so damaged. By the summer, about 3 months after the IUD was inserted my periods were normal, short, but normal, every 4 weeks. Now I have not had a period in 5 weeks (pregnancy test negative) and my cycle before that was only 3 weeks. I have finally decided that I'm done with mirena!! I am going for an appointment on the 17th to have it taken out. I have also just stopped the estrogen patch this week, so I'm hoping to have my body "de-toxed" of all of these hormones soon!

PREDNISONE.... a word that is unknown to the naive and despised by the the knowledgeable. Before i begin i want to tell you that prednisone for lack of better word F***ed me up. So heres my story with the pill. About a year ago i was officially diagnosed with Minimal Change Disease, now remember i am eighteen at the time, and was prescribed prednisone to cure the disease. Now being unaware of the severity of the drug and disease i casually continued life while taking 80mg per day of prednisone. Well this was good and all because it did in fact put me in remission, but the side effects were starting go surface. My face ballooned up "moon face", started experiencing random series of depression, became insomniatic, and unfortunately gained several pounds. Well this was not the end of side effects as for me. I continued with the medication and after 6 weeks of 80 mg i began my 5 week course of 60mg. Then after that i started 4 weeks on 40 mg and began tapering 5 mg every 2-3 weeks afterwards. Toward the middle of 60 mg the drug started taking its toll on my body as my skin lost its elasticity so i started getting gruesome strecht marks all over my body. I also became constipated for whatever reason most probably prednisone was at fault. I became very frightened actually terrified so i started to research about the drug in hopes of finding ways to avoid some side effects. In doing my research i found out very disturbing information regarding prednisone. Along with all the side effects that i mentioned above, prednisone also causes cateracts, glacoma, diabetes via insulin resistance, and osteoporosis. Now these i consider as the more severe permanent side effects as the list unfortunately is much longer. Finding out about the side effects i became extremely paranoid and started a very strict diet to hopefully avoid some permenat side effects. I admit reading about the information on prednisone created my paranoia and/or possible phycosis which ultimately led to my stress which led to my severe depression. Now this wasn't any old type of depression, i was sersiouly in need of some help. Everyone around me could tell something was wrong and really i dont blame then for in fact i felt as if my soul had died, the very essence of my being. Now magin if you can someone taking away your youth from you, sucking the very life out of you... thats exactly how i felt. To add along with the depression my grades became a wreck in college as i dropped several classes, lost a friend, developed problems with my parents as they tired to help me, and disrespected family relatives with my uncontrollable mood swings. A few weeks in of dieting and exercising i lost a lot of weight (15-20 pounds). As far as side effects non had changed i still had to deal with all that was mentioned above especially with the fragile skin that was a real burden as i had even a few stretch marks on my face from sleeping on my side. At this point of my long and what seemed to be a never ending journey i become exteremly weak. My body had no energy to run on as i refused to eat and when i did eat it was either foods that are considered free foods or protein nothing else. Everything at this time had been taken away from me including smoking marijuana (marijuana drops blood sugar as this would cause me to start feeling faint and lightheaded), alcohol (same as marijuana drops blood sugar), and the fact that i was not comfortable in my own skin (literally). I was driving myself insane. Everyday i was behind the computer searching for more and more. I was obsessed and became my worst nightmare. Oh by the way half in the medication therapy i showed 1+ grams of protein in my urine which my doctor possibly thought it could have been a relapse. This news i did not take lightly i had lost it and was prepared of comiting suicide. I cant lie, i really did not want to live anymore i just wanted to end this and suicide seemed like a very real and convienent possibility. If it had not been for my parents talking to me giving me a 3 hour speech and lecture i do not know what i would have done. Suicide at that point became out of the question because i could not do this to my family. So i went and purchased urine dip sticks to monitor the protein. The doctor had given me a 2 week window or chance to get back into remission or else he was going to prescribe me cytotoxic agents aka chemo therapy drugs. This was horrible news to me. So as i monitored my protein i found out of a very interesting trend. I noticed that my protein levels in the afternoon were in fact positive for protein and were usually up and down as far as how much but in the mornings i noticed i was always negative. Now this give me a huge bit of hope because when in researching about MCD months earlier i found out that there is a coniditon called orthostatic proteinuria which affects mostly young adolecent males and is a condition described as for some unknown reason there is protein loss in the afternoon when the person is upright and active then when they are supine or laying down the kidneys do not allow any portein loss. This condition is in fact harmless. I was very happy from then news and i told my doctor, he was somewhat doubting, but i don't blame him he is looking out for my best interest, but sure enough after the 2 weeks had past i went in again for my appointment after testing and i was negative for protein as i had expected. We began tapering after that point and i continusouly monitored my own tests at home and eventually i got off the steroid, actually today is that day after a 9 month period of heartache and distress. You know people say that they went to hell and back in a hard moment in life, well i went to hell stayed there for 9 months then came back. I feel so everyone who as ever needed to take steroids for long periods of time, i know its tough but believe it as it is indeed a potent drug and in most cases a miracle drug. It gave me a second chance at life and no matter how hard it was or how much pain it put me through i cannot complain for it did in fact cure me and thats why i can never hold any grudges. So thats my story i kno its not pretty but what can i say it is indeed mine whether i like it or not.

I have chronic sinusitis and last year I came down with a really bad infection. My Ear Throat Nose Specialist was on vacation so I had to see a "Family Medicine" doctor and he gave me ketek. I had to rush to the emergency room and the doctor there took me off the ketek immediately. I had an EXTREME reaction to it, the scariest effect being the pain in my liver and sudden jaundice (which are the beginning signs of acute liver failure.) There have also been lasting effects, the worst of which being on my heart. My heart rate has always been below average, and ever since the reaction my heart rate has been recorded as abnormally fast.