The cancer and stroke statistics are very frightening, especially with pills that contain estrogen and progesterone.
I’m not married, so this topic is of a scientific and medical, rather than daily life interest to me, but I’m always fascinated and frankly a little scared with the stories I learn (such as yours,
themeginthemoon, and that of
RedSoxWife). It looks like hormonal contraceptives are way too often prescribed, when the diseases and problems could be treated with less dangerous drugs and procedures.
Recently my niece (currently attending last year of medical school) told me that many of her peers are on hormonal contraceptives, often prescribed for various medical conditions, including really benign problems like acne and hirsutism (facial hair growth). And these are medical students, professionals who should know better than to take carcinogens for acne and hirsutism!
According to a large metastudy of the epidemiological evidence, published in 2009 (researchers from the Univ. of Seattle and the NIH), combined oral hormonal contraceptives increase the risk of triple-negative breast cancer 4.2-fold. TNBC, which makes up 10-20% of all breast cancer cases, is one nasty cancer with a bad prognosis, since it’s aggressive, and lacks the receptors for estrogen, progesterone and HER2, thus it can’t be treated with otherwise successful and effective drugs (tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors, trastuzumab/Herceptin). Also, for people who are carriers of predisposing BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations, the use of these contraceptives turns the already high “baseline” risk for breast cancer into a virtual assurance that they will get breast cancer (the incidence of breast cancer in women who are carriers of these mutations AND take combined oral hormonal contraceptives, was found to be 100% in a small study - every single one of these women got breast cancer). Even in the population-at-large, contraceptive use increases the incidence of breast cancer (all forms of breast cancer combined) more than 2-fold.
But I bet young women, even professionals, are either woefully uninformed, or willingly take the risk for the sake of “sexual liberation”, treating themselves to drugs that will cause breast cancer (and other problems - stroke, deep vein thrombosis). For those who are uninformed, we need to inform them - do you really want to take a carcinogen that will more than quadruple your risk of triple-negative breast cancer, in order to treat your acne or hirsutism??? And for those who think the risks are worth the license to have sex without consequences (without babies) - unfortunately there’s not too much we can do for them. The consequences will eventually hit many of these women, not in the form of pregnancies, but in the form of serious and often deadly diseases such as breast cancer and stroke. Really young women who have never carried a pregnancy to full term, are at especially high risk - their breast tissue reacts differently than those of women who carried a pregnancy to full term - meaning that these young women (often girls, teenagers) are at an increased risk of contracting breast cancer. In addition, I’ve heard a RN say that really young women with stroke is a new phenomenon. Stroke used to be old people’s disease, but now they are seeing young women in their IC units all the time, women who suffered a stroke - and these women have invariably been on contraceptives.
Something to think about. And the crazy thing is, many doctors will fail to inform their patients regarding the risks, not only because the doctors themselves may be uninformed, but also because many are of the mindset that “free sex” is so important that all women are willing, or should be willing, to take the risks anyway that go with the contraceptives. In other words, “yes, the Pill may cause cancer and stroke and thrombosis and whatnot, but you are surely not trying to tell me that you are willing to give up ‘free sex’ and a life free of the worries of getting yourself pregnant, now are you?”
The pill helped me for a very finite amount of time with my PCOS and PMDD, but I found much more relief through holistic means. Yay - no more hormones or weight gain 
Good luck TTC! I was afraid that after getting off of implanon, my fertility would take a really long time to come back, but we conceived less than 4 months later.