My year of hell on the evil Implanon (Member Advice on Contraception)

Member Name: foxylou1980

Product:	Member Advice on Contraception
Date:	03/03/09 (242 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stops you from getting pregnant, may stop you from having painful periods

Disadvantages: Can cause mental health problems as well as physical problems. Avoid!

IMPLANON:
The Implanon contraceptive implant is a progesterone-only method of birth control which has been widely publicised and prescribed in the UK. This is my account of the terrible effects using this method of birth control had on me.

MY STORY:
I had the Implanon inserted in January of 2005. Up to this point I was using a non-hormonal IUD (coil), but began to experience problems with this, the main ones being heavy periods and pain during and after sexual intercourse with my husband. My GP suggested that I try the Implanon, which looking back seems quite odd to me as he knew that I had had many problems in the past when using various forms of the contraceptive pill, including severe mood swings and massive weight gain.

There is a history of depression and mental health problems in my family; my mam suffered from mild agoraphobia and my dad has got the full gammet really; OCD, depression and anxiety. However I had never suffered from any of these illnesses before; despite some intensely stressful times I have been through I have always had a very optimistic outlook on life and a positive mental attitude.

This all changed within about a week of having the Implanon inserted. I can remember standing in the shower one evening and all of a sudden the thought popped into my head "I could just pick that razor up and cut my wrists with it". Yes I know this sounds totally crazy, believe me it gave me the fright of my life! But I just put it down to a weird little blip in my brain and didn't give it much more thought at the time.

I started to notice that I really wasn't enjoying things the same way I used to. For example, one of my favourite things was having a load of mates over to the house, putting some food on and having a drink and a laugh. I started to lose interest in this and began making excuses not to have people round (I now know that this is one of the first signs of depression: a lack of interest in things you would usually enjoy).

Then things started to get very bad very quickly. At the end of March I was walking home from the nursery with my friend after dropping my daughter off when I suddenly became very dizzy and felt like I couldn't breathe. I knew I was having a panic attack, something I had experienced before but only once at my nanna's funeral and a couple of times when flying (I hate flying!) My friend took me into our local Children's Centre and one of the staff called my husband, who came and got me and took to me see the GP. I was told (without even being examined) that I had labyrinthitis, an inner ear balance disorder which can appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. I was given some tablets to help with any dizzy spells and sent on my way.

The dizzy spells however began to get worse and worse, as did the feelings of panic and anxiety; I began to have very anxious thoughts surrounding my daughter who was 3 at the time, thinking that she was going to be in a car accident or that someone was going to abduct her in the night. These feelings came to a head one day when she had gone to stay at her nanna's; I can remember scrubbing my bathroom floor completely convinced that at any moment the police were going to knock at my front door and tell me that she was dead. Basically all of the fears that any parent has about their children came to the fore and I became very irrational.

As you can imagine this was starting to have a really bad effect on my marriage; we'd only been married for six months when I had the implant put in and should have still been in the honeymoon period. Instead my poor husband was having to deal with an irrational woman who was crying all the time and getting scared to let our daughter out of my sight.

Irrational as my feelings were I could see that they weren't normal so went to visit my GP. Unfortunately he was on holiday and I ended up with the docvtor from hell, evidently a working mother with a huge chip on her shoulder, who basically told me that I should be grateful that I got to stay home with my child and ought to pull myself together. She then prescribed me some Prozac and told me to come back to see her in six weeks (like I'd go back to see her; she no longer works at the surgery thankfully!)

I got my prescription for Prozac and was all set to take them. My husband then pointed out to me that all of this had started when I got my implant put in: maybe this had something to do with it? Thankfully we had the Internet so I was straight on there checking out this theory. It was then that I found the Aphrodite Women's Health Forum:

www.aphroditewomenshealth.com

There were so many women on there talking in the forums about how their various hormonal contraceptives had caused / triggered off so many problems, the main ones being depression, anxiety and a change of feelings towards their partners and even their children in some very sad cases. There weren't many people on there who had experience of the Implanon as it was relatively new at the time, but forums on many other sites were full of women saying how terrible their experiences had been; many had felt a suicidal depression sink on them completely out of the blue, and one woman had even tried to smother her baby!

This all began to add up to me: I had never suffered mental health problems in the past, yet here I was anxious and depressed with a complete lack of libido, obsessional thoughts and panic attacks. Right, I thought, time to get this implant taken out!

When I had the Implanon put in I was told that I could have it in for three years, but if I wanted it out before then it would be a simple and quick process. Well, it wasn't. Far from it. It was in June that I first started to connect the Implanon with all the problems I was having, but I didn't actually manage to convince anyone to take it out for me until the middle of November. For some reason (I'm guessing financial) I kept getting fobbed off with "just give it another couple of months" and "there's no evidence that there is a lick between the implant and depression" (not counting all the anecdotal evidence that is out there if you bother to look of course).

In the months between June and November I also started to experience physical problems. These included numbness in my right breast, tingling feelings in the arm the implant was in, and most worryingly intense pain in the right side of my abdomen. I was actually admitted to hospital at one point as I was so crippled with this intense pain; I was given a scan for gallstones but there was nothing there. I now believe that this was pain in my liver after talking to another girl online who had expereinced the exact same thing when she was had the implant. I was also told that I had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as every time I ate anything it caused me to have terrible stomach cramps. I actually pretty much gave up on eating at one point; I lost over a stone in weight and my clothes were hanging off me (at any other time this would have been a bonus!)

No doctor I saw at the time would accept my view that it was the implant causing these problems; understandably I have very little faith in the medical profession these days! The only medically qualified person who actually believed me was my daughter's health visitor, who had suffered similar problems when using the Depo Provera contraceptive injection.

I cannot begin to describe the relief I felt when that implant was taken out of my arm! There had been many times when I very nearly cut it out myself, but I knew that if I did that I'd be on a one-way ticket to the local psychiatric unit! It was literally like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The physical symptoms I'd been experiencing disappeared within a week of having it removed. Unfortunately the mental scars have taken much longer to heal.

I used to believe that people with depression, anxiety etc. just needed to get a grip of themslves, I now know that this is not the case. Of course there is a lot you can do to help yourself, such as vigorous exercise, taking supplments, a healthy diet etc., but these conditions are medical illnesses and need to be thought of as such by society. Anyway, I digress!

After I the implant removed my periods didn't return to normal straightaway, in fact they only got back into any kind of regular pattern after having my son 15 months ago. I've also been left with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which has caused ovulation to be very painful for me. Luckily at the moment my cysts aren't too big although one of my ovaries is quite enlarged. This only became obvious when I was having ultrasounds during my pregnancy. I believe this was caused by the Implanon stopping me from having a period completely for just over a year.

I am not against contraception in any way; I have no religious or moral views on the subject whatsoever. What really concerns me is all the women who are suffering because of the Implanon, and the fact that it is being given to teenage girls whose bodies are not yet fully developed. At least if you're on the pill and start to have problems you can just stop taking it.

THE MEDICAL FACTS:
1) Implanon contains etonogestrel, a synthetic progestin. Synthetic progestins have long been known to exacerbate depression drastically in people who suffer from the condition, as they deplete the brain of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates many bodily processes, including our mood. They also increase the production of the enzyme monamine oxidase, an excess of which is known to cause depression (many older antidepressants were monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which worked by decreasing the production of this enzyme).
2) Synthetic hormones practically wipe the body of it's vitamin B stores. Vitamin B is used for many bodily functions, including the production of serotonin. I would strongly advise any girl or woman taking any form of hormonal contraceptive to buy themselves a good multivitamin and a vitamin B complex.

THE ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE:
If you have read my story and would like to get the opinions of other women who have suffered as I have, I would check out the Aphrodite Women's health forum I mentioned above, or just google Implanon, depression and read some of the stories that come up.

IN CONCLUSION:
I had a terrible experience with this implant and would strongly advise anyone thinking of getting one to read up all you can about it first. I'm sure for many people this works very well; all I know is that if it doesn't the effects can be devastating.

Summary: I would advise anyone against this, once you have it in doctors can be very reluctant to remove it