The Year I Took The Pill
The Year I Took The Pill
The story of how I tried against all odds to make the pill work, and then found the most empowering form of contraception in fertility awareness.
Since I was a young girl, I’ve always been passionate about sexual health, and sexuality in general. I’m naturally curious, and I’ve always had the instinct to want to understand my body. Growing up going to Catholic school, I wouldn't say that the culture I was raised in did much to cultivate that instinct, but I grew in rebellion of it most immediately.
I’ve gone through many self discoveries in this short lifetime, but the revolution that stirred my soul the most was learning about fertility awareness.
Fertility awareness, to me, when read more deeply, is about learning the science and spirituality of living by my menstrual cycle. This blog is meant to serve you in learning about this topic, and how you can best utilize the information to live a healthy & autonomous menstrual life.
The story of how I got to this point is a lot more benign and relatable than you’d think. I didn’t go to medical school or major in pharmacology. I am just a woman who found this information through having an experience and refusing to give up on myself, with some solidarity and luck sprinkled on top. I realize now that my experience is valid, not a false individual reality or an easily dismissed anecdote as we’ve been told. That quick "you're just an anecdote" knock down has been shoved at me since I started speaking out and I've grown comfortable with this empty retort. I realize now that it is imperative that more of us people who menstruate learn this information and pass it along to the next person.
In the spring of 2014, I met someone that intrigued and excited me. This story is as much a story about us as it is a story about me. We spent a lot of time getting to know one another, and we discussed getting tested so that we could make informed sexual health decisions. After this rather slow physical start to our relationship, we decided it was time to start experiencing each other’s intimacy. This sounds romantic until you hear the popping sound of a condom breaking like a helium balloon. Not once, not twice, but three times. It wasn’t what we imagined as the start of our sex life together, but we had to laugh at such a slow burn leading up to this very silly moment. We double checked the expiration dates, but they were from the clinic and were perfectly fine. Over the course of that first month, we broke over 50 condoms. We tried a bunch of different ways to make this work, different brands, different sizes, different lube. Condoms were not a reliable form of contraception for us. And I was sick of fishing for small plastic bits out of my vagina. So I, with the confidence of all the women in my life who had told me the pill was safe, reliable, and feminist, went to the OB/GYN and on the first visit received a prescription for Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo.
The doctor didn’t tell me all that much about it, or about my options. She simply recommended it as her first choice and I believed her.
I left feeling empowered and excited to use birth control with my partner! No more worrying about condoms, and we would always have the condom jokes later on, I thought. Well, come to find out, at my first trip to the pharmacy, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo costs $90.00 out of pocket… per month… with insurance. I was not sure what to do but the pharmacist told me if I was a student that I could receive a discount by signing up for this promotion and returning next month, at $25.00 a month. This was still a lot for a fresh out of college grad, but considering I wanted to have a responsible sex life with my new partner, I felt as if this was my only option. Thus began a long exploration with contraception, though we would have had no idea at the time.
This was normal life, the burden of contraception falls on the person who menstruates, they take birth control and it prevents pregnancy. As to how it worked or why it had to be this way, I had no idea, the thought hadn’t ever entered my mind.
I started my first pack of Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo in July of 2014. That summer was a blur, because my body reacted most immediately to this influx of steroid drugs. I had no prior experience with prescription drugs, or a need to take them. My number one health issue at the time was recurrent migraines, and I started getting them at age 17. Never did my doctor tell me that I could be at an increased risk of migraines and even stroke from taking the pill, something I wish I had known before I made a choice to use it. For years I wondered what was the cause of this extreme pain in my right temple – environmental, hormonal, or something else. I had just gotten health insurance, so I could start going to the doctor to get it addressed. Besides this, I was an athlete, and lead a very active lifestyle, bicycling myself to & from school, at least 6 miles riding a day. I also had menstrual cramps but had always just treated them with ibuprofen. My teenage cycles were normal and relatively regular, and thus I had no prior experience with birth control. So I had no idea of the storm that was brewing on the horizon.
Yes, I like so many other people who have shared their harrowing experience with ovulation suppressing drugs, feel like this period of my life was like a dark cloud, or fog that prevented me from thriving the way I deserved. In these first few months I had no way of discerning how this would change my body and brain so drastically.
The first alarm was nausea. Every single morning for the first 3 months, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I would bike to work and would often be so sick for those first few hours of the day. I remember one time while running errands for work, I debated throwing up in some bushes on 5th avenue in Manhattan because I was just that nauseous. The doctor had told me there may be some symptoms but that my "body would adjust", so when my partner rightfully shared his concern I shrugged him off, proclaiming that the doctor knew best and knew this was going to happen, but that it would subside. I believed her and her so-called expert advice, when I should have believed my own body, and this is part of why I’m writing about fertility awareness.
Taking account of yourself is imperative to making the best decisions about your body and your healthcare. You always have a right to that, despite others proclaiming their supposed authority about your body.
The second alarm was the migraines. They immediately got worse, and became more frequent. One night in the first month on Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo, my partner stayed up with me all night as I threw up intermittently. The pressure in my head felt like nothing I had ever experienced before, and I already had a lot of experience dealing with my migraines. We debated going to the hospital, but because emergency healthcare is so expensive, we didn’t. He had a talk with me the next morning, about whether this was truly the right decision, and again I assured him that if I just toughed this out, things would get better. I know that everything happens the way it's supposed to, and I was supposed to become an advocate for fertility awareness, but I wish I hadn't put myself through this misery.
These were early onset examples of how I was changing. I have several instances where you think, rationally, I should have stopped using drugs that were giving me such side effects early on.
Yet the weight of society, the doctor herself, and many feminists I knew, all telling me that I would be perfectly fine was what convinced me that this would all work out. I couldn’t deal with another contraceptive failure, and so I pushed myself to make this attempt a success.
The following months were an exercise in submitting to those external forces, and the mental cloud that formed wouldn't seem to clear up. Things were changing with my body and mind for which I was not prepared. To name a few: my breasts elongated into mismatched cylinders and my nipples expanded unevenly. My midsection, butt, and thighs began to expand, and by the 6th month mark I couldn't fit into most of my pants and shorts. One day I threw them all out in a fit of rage (I regret this now). My face was inflamed, my cheeks filled out and acne appeared along my cheeks, jawline, and neck. For the first time in my life, dark, coarse hairs grew from my chin, cheeks, and along the corners of my mouth. Before I knew it, I looked in the mirror with disgust. I became increasingly insecure and began to hate my body. The feeling of self hatred and doom was so looming that I would snap at my partner for looking at me getting dressed in our bedroom. I was falling into a deep depression, becoming anxious, and hurting without knowing the cause. I found that my sexual satisfaction and libido were depleted, I could no longer achieve orgasm effortlessly, ending in many frustrated nights. I couldn't see what was obvious because of the reassurance from others that birth control was commonplace, and worked as intended. After having such an amazing first bloom to my relationship, this was stomping us out before we had even gotten started.
As long as it was effective in preventing pregnancy, right?
Wrong. This is an unacceptable, anti-feminist way of approaching someone who has suffered the side effects of birth control.
After 6 months, I had to return to the doctor to renew the prescription. It was at this appointment that I told my doctor I felt like things were happening to me that I wasn't comfortable with, mainly the mental symptoms that were becoming a problem for me to function. I was fully functional before them, never having had a history of depression, anxiety, rage, or suicidal thoughts. My mind was so foggy that it took my partner, my friends, and my family telling me that I should investigate how I was feeling to say something. My doctor said "well, Ortho is a pill that goes up in dose, week by week, so I can recommend we switch to Lo Loestrin FE, which is a lower dosage and gives you the same dosage every day." This, she said, would be easier on my system and lessen the side effects. Arguably, Lo Loestrin was worse. After the switch, what was a tropical storm became a category 5 hurricane.
I never hated my life more than when I took Lo Loestrin FE.
It's the same year I had more financial success than ever, more things to be happy about, a relationship, a garden, an active life as a community organizer. Despite all of this, I fell to my lowest points during this 6 month period. I can remember a few days in particular which scared everyone around me. One day, while driving, I filled with so much rage with a bicyclist that had cut me off (remember, I was a bicyclist myself and under normal circumstances would always protect and defer to cyclists on the road) that I committed an act of aggressive road rage that could have easily endangered myself, others in the car, and others on the road. I count my blessings that nothing terrible happened that day. Other days, I would break out into fits of sobbing, uncontrollable and breathless, falling on the floor or collapsing in the shower. I would contemplate suicide, ideas of ways to self harm or end my life, and would lament that I was worthless and no one would miss me. I couldn't trust my partner, I couldn't listen to anyone, I couldn't hear anyone's advice.
My mind narrowed and darkened, my spirit was compromised, and I was hurting. It all happened so fast.
I flew to Chicago to visit my friend in May (10 months into my pill experience) and she said to me "you know, there are natural ways we can learn to deal with this" -- obviously she was concerned, but she was the first person to present her concern with such gentleness and care that it actually broke through to me. (Thank you Nellie I will love you forever for this!) I looked at my face and I couldn't recognize myself. I slathered my face in concealer and contoured with blush to hide the puffiness every day. It was on this trip I realized I needed to confront my doctor about what was happening to me, physically and mentally.
In July, I returned once more to the gynecologist. I hadn't felt fully heard at my last appointment, and I wrote this tweet before heading to the clinic, which now serves as a record of how I was feeling at the time:
This time, I asked the nurse practitioner who weighed me to look at my weight chart from last year. I had gained 16 lbs. This might not seem like a lot, but as someone with a previously strong metabolism and healthy lifestyle, this was alarming. I asked her if she thought it was normal and all she could say was that it was "normal for people taking contraceptives." Little did I know that the pill had induced me into a state of hypothyroidism, which would take 3 full years to recover from. Now that I'm back in my body again, it's hard to think of what I was like in the summer of 2015.
The gynecologist entered the room, and I attempted to take control of the consult by telling her that I was having worse mental effects from Lo Loestrin FE than I had even had with Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo. Her response floored me. It planted the seed of what would become my burgeoning passion for reproductive sovereignty and autonomist menstrual management. She said it "couldn't possibly be the pills making you depressed, but I suggest you make an appointment with a therapist." She asked me if I wanted a refill on my prescription, and I said absolutely not. I walked out of the gynecologist and decided I wouldn't be returning.
I remember feeling so insulted by the interaction. It was like a fresh wound. Not only did I suffer for a year just trying to make these pills work, I was just completely dismissed by the person I had placed my trust in, the person who's advice I had taken over my own, and the people around me who loved and knew me. This woman had known me for all of 30 minutes over the course of a year, but thought she had the authority to tell me what was going on with my body.
I remember when it hit me: this is not what feminism is about. It cannot be. I refuse for it to be.
Frustrated and confused, I went home and began researching the IUD. Other friends said they had had much better experiences with it. I called the gyno back, but because my insurance wouldn't cover the device, they refused to order it. My partner did his own research, and told me he thought the side effects could be on par with the pill, or even worse.
On top of not being able to access another contraceptive option, that autumn, my menstrual cycle responded to the drug withdrawal. I had a 45 day cycle, and a 49 day cycle after that. Of course, at the time I had no idea that birth control even affected ovulation, or that hypothyroidism caused long cycles, so I went into panic mode. I thought I was pregnant that very first cycle off the pill. I raged at my partner "how could you do this to me?" still struggling immensely with the hormonal changes that were occurring. He was patient and kind to me, through all of this. We did not deserve to go through what we did, and I'm grateful every day for his partnership through the worst year of my life.
In the middle of my fake pregnancy scare, I went to a bar to visit a friend. I told her about my worries, that my period was not showing up, but my pregnancy test was negative. She told me she had just gotten this book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler and that it might be able to help me, and that I could even manage my fertility naturally without having to rely on invasive forms of birth control at all. I'd always been into science, so I had no idea such scientific ideas existed, or else I would have tried them much sooner. We ran upstairs to her apartment and she gifted me the book, my most cherished possession to this day. I will never forget how important women's solidarity and care informed my ability to make such an important transition. (Thank you Ellpetha, I will love you forever for this!)
I went home, and spent the following week reading the book cover to cover.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
I was boiling inside, I felt cheated, I felt wronged, I felt that I had suffered medical negligence and harm. How could they push us into using invasive devices and pills while at the same time obscuring this information from view, dismissing it as pseudoscience, and not allowing us the choice and freedom that comes with the basic understanding of how our bodies function on their own? You can't get pregnant on any day of your cycle? Who knew! It was like one revelation after another. I practically shoved the book into my partner's hands and demanded he take part in this too. He, being the most supportive lover I've ever had, said "let's do it." (Thank you Makonnen, you are my best friend!)
54 cycles later, my body and mind has largely recovered. Oh, and I never got pregnant, not even once.
The first year I spent learning how to chart properly, and getting a handle on the fertility signs. I learned that I needed to support my thyroid and that explained my feelings of exhaustion and depression. Once I targeted that, I saw myself improve and I saw my fertility charts normalize into repeating healthy patterns. The second and third years were spent dealing with the excess weight, acne, and hirsutism. I timidly created a hashtag on twitter, #FAMTaughtMe, to share my experiences, with a good deal of backlash thrown my way. But it couldn't ever stop what I had started. Even this blog has brought up a lot of tough feelings, I would rather not think about my lowest moments, but I know that they serve such an important purpose now, and that calms and directs my spirit.
Now I'm at a point where I can really make time to help others, and it feels so good to be able to share that you are not alone in this, that we know ovulation is important and healthy for our bodies and minds. I make resources about fertility awareness not to say that everyone should choose this method over the other options available, but to share that you always have the power. You always have the choice. It's all within you. Throughout all of time, we have gotten on by sharing with one another, and caring for each other.
You don't have to listen to disparaging voices when your own is so loud, so beautiful, and so strong. I believe you.
I'm here if you need to talk, the way others were there for me, I extend my hand to you now. Never accept less than you deserve, with contraception or anything else.