The Battle over Essure

[EnglishTeacher]

One night in April 2015, Keisha Carney tried to go to bed in spite of a bad toothache, which turned into an even worse headache — the kind that doesn’t let you sleep. “I couldn’t stand still. I was up walking around,” she says. She woke her husband, who called her dentist’s emergency line and then drove to a 24-hour pharmacy for pain medication.

The next morning, Keisha had an emergency appointment with the dentist, who looked in her mouth and shook her head. “She was like, ‘What happened?’ ” Keisha recalls. Her wisdom tooth was so infected it needed to be extracted. It was the first of five teeth she’d lose.

Carney, 35 at the time, had never had bad teeth; in fact, she was known for her huge pearly smile. Despite juggling work and a large family, including 8-month-old twins, the Dumfries, Va., resident was in good shape all around. “For some perspective, my wife is a unicorn,” says her husband, RW Carney, 37. “She’s one of those women who wore heels her entire pregnancy, no issues, no nothing.”

But suddenly lots of “little things” were going haywire with Keisha’s body, the couple recounts for me as we sit in their neat, airy suburban townhouse about 30 miles south of Washington. Her hair was falling out in clumps, she was having unusually heavy periods and severe cramps at odd times in her cycle, she was gaining weight and battling brain fog and severe fatigue — even when she’d slept.

The battle over Essure: Some people see a breakthrough in female contraception. Others see a dangerous medical device.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Does this remind anybody else of the Dalkon Shield IUD back in the 1970s that gave women all kinds of infections?

I cannot figure out why anyone would let a doctor put some foreign device into their body without doing a ton of research first. Nor why when someone all of a sudden got multiple weird symptoms after having the device put in, they would not immediately suspect the device might be causing the problem. It’s simple failure analysis - what has changed to cause all this mess to be happening?

 

[John_Lazarus]

Does this remind anybody else of the Dalkon Shield IUD back in the 1970s that gave women all kinds of infections?

I cannot figure out why anyone would let a doctor put some foreign device into their body without doing a ton of research first. Nor why when someone all of a sudden got multiple weird symptoms after having the device put in, they would not immediately suspect the device might be causing the problem. It’s simple failure analysis - what has changed to cause all this mess to be happening?

People would do the same thing if sticking some object in their body would cause them to lose weight / develop muscles / be smart / grow hair. And should they develop weird side effects, it’s easier to think they come form somewhere else than the magic bullet which the think (hope?) will allow them to not have to change their lifestyle (like diet, exercise, abstain, etc).

 

[EnglishTeacher]

Does this remind anybody else of the Dalkon Shield IUD back in the 1970s that gave women all kinds of infections?

I cannot figure out why anyone would let a doctor put some foreign device into their body without doing a ton of research first. Nor why when someone all of a sudden got multiple weird symptoms after having the device put in, they would not immediately suspect the device might be causing the problem. It’s simple failure analysis - what has changed to cause all this mess to be happening?

True. Although, while I personally can’t imagine letting a doctor put a permanent foreign object in my body (other than, say, a knee replacement), you can’t blame these women too much. The doctor described it as safer than a normal tubal ligation and made it sound easy and natural.

Really, though, it sounds kind of horrific even when it works the way it was intended. Basically, it forces your Fallopian tubes to become inflamed and grow scar tissue around the coils to block your tubes. The only way to remove the device, if you ever want them out, is a hysterectomy in most cases. shiver. I really feel for these women. They made one poor decision–on a doctor’s recommendation–and will have to suffer for it the rest of their lives. I blame the companies who make and market these devices, as well as the doctors, but not the women.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I guess I can understand why most people trust their doctors without thinking too hard about it, even when the doc is giving you a piece of metal to put permanently in your Fallopian tube (I agree, that made me cringe too) or giving them huge doses of opioids for pain. My parents had a lot of major illnesses to deal with when I was growing up and my mother was the skeptical type so between their knowledge passed to me, and reading about stuff like Dalkon Shield, I’ve always been very cautious about just accepting new drugs or new technologies.