The other thing I wish I'd fought back about.

This post is inspired by two other posts that I recently read. Two weeks ago, Sunshine reflected on her past use of birth control pills and their effect on her body, and, at the end, questioned whether it really should be considered safe, or desirable, for women to intentionally influence their endocrine systems in such a way. A week afterwards, Maria wrote about the advice she would give to sixteen-year-old girls, urging them to be proactive in preserving their future fertility.

I have been mulling over my own past usage of the pill, too, as I try to put together all the pieces in my puzzle, which, I think, can't but be affected at least in part by my own negative pill experiences. I took two different kinds throughout my twenties, each causing strange and unbalanced happenings in my body. And contrary to Maria's advice, which I wish I could apply retroactively, I just carelessly brushed aside these strange happenings and went on with my life.

***

I first went on the pill at the age of twenty with little forethought or concern. I was in my first grown-up long-term relationship and saw pill-taking as just what a stably coupled woman does to prevent the creation of one of those pesky little things known as babies.

I stopped taking it a few years later. There was a mix-up with the prescription refill, and I didn't get the new cycle of pills in time. "Wait for your next period and then start them again," the doctor told me. So I waited ... and waited ... and waited. The relationship had ended before my period came. Was I worried about this post-pill amenorrhea? Not really. Any babies I might want to have were far away in the future, thus the state of my reproductive system was far from being a concern – and it was just so convenient not to have my period.  

Next serious boyfriend, next pill-popping stint. I was in my mid-twenties. Spoiled by the convenience of post-pill amenorrhea, this time I chose a medication that promised to repress my period for three months at a time. Sounds great, right? "Some women experience light spotting and breakthrough bleeding during the first few months of use," the pamphlet threatened. That's a gross under-estimation of what I experienced – and not just for the first few months, but for months and months and even more months, because the longer you wait for something that doesn't happen, the longer you feel like you have to keep waiting.

"No period for three months? More like a period of three months!" my boyfriend and I used to joke. So funny!

After a while, I stopped taking that pill, too. He and I were out for a run. I felt something on my leg and looked down. Blood. Which trickled and then began pouring from me. He left me huddled on the sidewalk, hiding between two parked cars, staining the cement, and ran home to get our own car and some towels.

For an hour or two, I lost blood, profusely, and tissue, too. Could it be a miscarriage, he wondered? Should I take a pregnancy test, he suggested? Displaying a profound ignorance of the chemistry behind positive versus negative results, I told him that it was too late for that, that even if I had somehow been pregnant, I could no longer be considering what had just came out of me. He convinced me to do it anyway. Negative.  

So what had happened, then? Did I go to the doctor to talk about it? No. I was busy; there was life to be lived and I didn't have time to waste in a waiting room. Anyway, whatever. A baby was still not in the immediate future, and if there were anything to worry about, I could do just that – worry – when the time was right.

In any case, though, I had swallowed my last pill. I couldn't risk another public humiliation like that one, and the three-month-long periods were getting really tiring.

Like the last time I had stopped taking birth control pills, I didn't get a period for ages. When one finally arrived, months passed before the next one. And again, more months passed before the one after that. "What's wrong with you?" my boyfriend would laugh. "I don't know, what's wrong with me?" I would laugh in return. So funny, again!

I began to think that perhaps I should stay away from artificial reproductive hormones for a while and ended up getting an IUD, the non-hormonal copper kind, which was a perfect companion for the rest of my baby-preventing days. Eventually, and for the first time since I was a teenager, my body began to regulate itself into fairly regular cycles, or what seems like in retrospect, given that I never really tracked them until I started thinking about having a baby.

***

So, at the end of all this, what? Even if my cycles seem well and truly normal now (well, except for this, which I think was due to temporarily stopping my thyroid medication, thanks to an obstinate doctor who wouldn't renew my prescription), what kind of effect did these years of negative pill reactions have on my endocrine system and my reproductive health?

And why didn't I ask more about my body's strange reactions to the pill? Why did I just tell myself that these things work themselves out, and if they don't, that I could worry about them later? I don't know. I have no excuses. I'm educated, I have good access to good medical care, I have the capacity and the ability to ask questions and to find out more. It's shameful to think of how ignorant I made myself about my own health and how I left to the future answers I should have found out at the time. 

Even if I'd asked more, found out more, known more, perhaps there was nothing I could have done and nothing that could have been changed. But having the knowledge is the first step, and we all deserve to have that about our bodies. Equally, we have the obligation to seek it – a lesson I recently learned the hard way. That's what I'm having a hard time forgiving myself for.

Finally, I wonder if girls and women really think about – really realize – how the pill functions, changing a body's natural hormonal state by adding artificial hormones and preventing the release of natural ones? It seems obvious, and thus perhaps it sounds condescending to wonder – but I wonder because I never really thought much deeper than if I take this pill, I won't get pregnant. I never focused on how or why.

I appreciate the social and cultural advances that can be attributed to the introduction of the pill, as well as its use in treating certain medical conditions. I'm not making any conclusions, which I wouldn't be able to back up scientifically in any case. I don't have any answers. What I do have, though, given what happened to me on the pill, is a bad feeling that lingers. A bad feeling that perhaps those negative effects are themselves still lingering. If I could go back and redo my life, I would not again choose to take it.

Those of you with enough endurance to read this far, what do you think about the pill? Did you have any strange experiences during or after taking it? Do you share my worries that perhaps it had a negative long-term impact on your body's natural equilibrium?