I cried today symptoms and conditions

I am so glad I found this site. I have been experiencing severe joint pain and constant edema. I never even thought it could possibly be the toprol xl 50 mg I have been on for over a year now. I have had extensive blood work to find out why I have such joint pain and everything has been coming out normal! I am in pain EVERY day...and it has been getting worse. I do have a thyroid condition (which was also recently checked and all the blood work was fine), because I got terrible joint pain as a symptom of Hashimoto's thyroiditis (an auto-immune disorder) way back in 1999 when I was first diagnosed. So, when this terrible joint pain returned, I was sure it was the thyroid and that my medication for THAT would have to be adjusted. Needless to say, I was shocked and concerned that my thyroid numbers are all normal.
I cried today over this pain...I am only 44 years old and I feel like I'm 90 years old. Maybe fate led me here tonight. It may or may not be the toprol causing all of this pain, but at least I have some hope now. I am scared because since I do have an "auto-immune" disease, I am apparantly at a much higher risk of developing other auto-immune diseases....so perhaps it is not the toprol. I HOPE IT IS THOUGH...

I rarely ever cry, yet I cried today when I found this board. I am so very relieved to see that I'm not alone. I have been taking Yasmin for over a year now and I've had so many side effects from it, I never knew that all this could be from my BC.

For the last year I have been struggling with Vertigo (dizziness), I've had MRI's, CTscans, blood tests, you name it, I've had it, and they have never figured out what has caused it. I've had some awful mood swings, but I'm glad that I can feel them so I can control them. I've been depressed for the last 9 months, and I'm slowly starting to break out of it. I've had lower abdominal pain, pains in my legs and calves, chest pains, abnormal b.m.'s, nausea, headaches and migraines. Half the time my mind is so foggy that I can't complete a sentence without having to pause and figure out where I was at.
I don't have the memory that I use to, and I can't get my brain to function as quickly as it did.
Also, the only allergy I had before was to latex, now it seems that I'm allergic to everything and I'm suffering from some pretty mean allergies this year. The congestion is so awful sometimes that I have panic attacks because it feels like I can't breathe and I'm not getting any oxygen what-so-ever. All of these symptoms are out of the norm. for me. I used to be so active and moving non-stop, now I count down the seconds until I can sit down again.

I'm going to try weaning myself off of the Yasmin so I won't have a complete withdrawal from it. Because I've noticed that when I finish my cycle and go to the placeboes I start to get some severe low-abdominal cramping.

I'm crossing my fingers and hope that this makes me feel better. I can't wait to feel like my normal self once again, this has been so hard for me to deal with since I've always been an independant woman, and now I have to depend on someone to help me out from time to time.

Thank you all for being so strong to step up and listing your complaints about this evil drug.

RaeAnna

Hi Silke,
Thank you for responding to my post. Since writing it, I have been to my family doctor who actually shook his head and mumbled something about "women networking, men never do this" when I showed him the printed out pages from this site. His advice for my chest pains, etc. to feel better is"a nice week in Jamaica without the kids". I cried. Today I had an apointment with my gyno and I was prepared for more of the same. Instead he told me that I was the first of his patients to complain of side effects from Yasmin but that he would research it, call the pharmecutical company and get back to me about what he finds out. (I asked him specifically to find out about treatment or relief for the symptoms). I am also going to report these to the makers of Yasmin, and recommend that everyone here do the same.(unless of course you already have and I'm just behind...)
I've been off Yasmin for two weeks now and am even worse symptom wise. If anyone has had severe symptoms (chest pain, pressure,anxiety,hair loss and growth, etc) and has gotten well again, please post! I am a little discouraged when I see how long these symptoms are lasting.
Determined to find a solution,
Kath