Friday, February 12, 2010

Enter the Nuvaring

I've been on some kind of birth control pills to regulate my period and keep me from being anemic for 4 years. When I was in high school, my GP noticed that I was iron deficient, and declared "Get thee to a gynecologist to get thy internal genitalia under control!"

I was on Pill #1 for 3 years, and Pill #2 for one year. Both started out as wonder drugs, then morphed into something with crazy side effects. With Pill #1, my period dropped to almost nothing (which spooked me a few times), cleared up my PMS symptoms, regulated my cycles, and made me all around a happy camper. Until about a year and a half in, when my libido started to die off and my poor little vagina started to dry up. I mean that quite literally. When I finally went off Pill #1, I had to use silicone lubricant daily to not chafe internally when I walked. That shit hurts!

With Pill #2, my libido came back within a month, and all was good. Until 6 months later, when my libido started to drop again, my flow started to increase, and brought the return of the whole irritable-crampy-bloated-my-boobs-don't-fit-in-my-bra-and-they-hurt thing. Oh yeah. I'd forgotten about all that unpleasantness. Gee, thanks body. The iron deficiency reared its ugly head again,  so we changed meds again.

Yesterday, I left the world of daily birth control pills behind. I took my last birth control pill - ok, to be honest, it was one of the placebo days - in the morning, went to my annual gynecological exam in the afternoon, and began using the Nuvaring in the evening.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that I get less side effects from this one. I'm sick of side effects.

But regardless, it felt damn good to erase the daily alarm from my phone this morning. No more timed pills! Huzzah!

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