I’ve been on birth control for 5 years… not only to prevent pregnancy but also because I have the craziest PMS symptoms and irregular periods. Once a month I can be found sprawled on the bathroom floor (ANY bathroom floor) dry heaving, having the worst cramps and wanting to diarrhea all at once. Sexy huh?

So I decided to go on Yaz!

After a few years, I heard one scary story to another about Yaz. It never occurred to me how new Yaz was until now. It came out in 2006 so it hasn’t even been 5 years yet! However, after trying Ortho Tri- Cyclen Lo, Desogen and Loestrin… I decided to commit to Yaz and I was on it for about 3 years straight.

However, a month ago I decided to get rid of the pill altogether and just try to tough it out during that ridiculous once a month attack. I hated that no matter what, I got side effects of BC.  I still was nauseous and often just felt an overall grossness. I hated not knowing whether I was sick or whether it was just the BC. (Now I know that if I feel gross, I’m just sick!)

NPR recently had told a story on Yaz, and it freaked me out more than ever!

Here’s what happened to 16 year old Katie Anderson while on Yaz:

“I started developing this kind of pinching, twinging, numbing kind of feeling in my left butt cheek,” she recalls. She thought it was a pinched nerve.

Then a couple of weeks later, she was awakened with terrible chest pain.

“She tells me she woke up about 5 o’clock in the morning,” says Beth Anderson, Katie’s mom. “She sat bolt upright in bed — couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, was trying to cry as silently as possible because it hurt to breathe.”

When she didn’t leave for school on time, Beth went to check on her. “I found her sitting in a puddle of tears saying, ‘Mommy, I can’t breathe! Mommy, I can’t breathe! I couldn’t even reach my cell phone!’ “

Her doctor diagnosed pleurisy, an inflammation of the chest lining that isn’t serious, and prescribed Motrin. That helped for a while, but over the next few days, Katie developed shortness of breath. And her left leg went totally numb and cold.

“My left leg was completely purple,” she says.

It turns out an enormous blood clot had formed in her leg. A piece of it had broken off and lodged in her lung. Doctors call that a pulmonary embolism, and it can be deadly.

At the emergency room, Beth recalls, “the doctor came in and he took one look at Katie’s cold, blue leg, and he said, ‘Wow! That’s a big blood clot! You’re on birth control, aren’t you?’

- article from gpb.news