“Your new best friend” is how my naturopath described the Copper Paragard IUD that I had just had inserted inside of my body.

Just a few weeks before, she had enthusiastically recommended that I get an IUD, but I had gone to Planned Parenthood to have it inserted and was reporting back to her on how the whole procedure had gone. She had warned me that my body might respond negatively to the insertion and had recommended a protocol to follow before I went to the clinic. Those things seemed to have worked and I was happy to be reporting that I had felt only a little discomfort and was feeling good.

I had been seeing her for about a year because she had been highly recommended as someone who could help me with some new peri-menopause symptoms that I had been dealing with and she came to mind as a good person to call for advice on a good birth control method. I was in my mid 40’s, had divorced my husband of 23 years and was starting a new relationship. One of the many differences between these two men was that my ex had a vasectomy long ago and my new boyfriend did not.

So….. for the first time in almost 20 years, I was faced with thinking about birth control and the real possibility of getting pregnant if I did not figure it out. When I was in my 20’s (pre-vasectomy), my birth control method of choice had been a method called FAM (Fertility Awareness Method) combined with condoms. I had tracked my cycle, which had been very regular, by taking my temperature every morning and keeping charts which told me when I was ovulating, when I was fertile, when I was not fertile and when I was going to start bleeding. Having this kind of information made things pretty clear and especially since my cycles had always been very very regular, it was a good fit and worked well for me for many many years.

When my ex had gotten a vasectomy (about 16 years before our divorce) I had continued to track the length of my cycles but had stopped taking my temperature each morning. Since my cycles were now becoming a little irregular due to my age and the early signs of peri-menopause were starting to show, I was feeling cautious about starting to use FAM again and my boyfriend and I were depending solely on condoms. One of the reasons that I had called my naturopath for advice was that I had been hearing about new things like apps and herbs from younger friends that could also be used to help make the Fertility Awareness Method even more effective and dependable.

Instead of telling me the information that I had been hoping to hear about, she almost immediately started mentioning this thing called the IUD which stands for Intra Uterine Device. She said that since I was in peri-menopause and my cycles were getting irregular that I could not depend on FAM any more and that I would likely get pregnant if I tried it.

I now know that tracking our cycles using FAM is one of the most useful tools available to help us see what is happening to our bodies during peri-menopause and, combined with condoms, it is the method that I recommend. It has been very helpful in my recovery from the IUD as it has helped me track hormonal irregularities.

The naturopath told me that since I was so used to vasectomy, that the best method would be to get an IUD because it was so easy and I would not have to think about it. At first, I was surprised. In the 4-5 years since my divorce, I had been getting regular Pap smears and exams at Planned Parenthood and each time they had also been mentioning the IUD as a recommended method. I had been considering getting my tubes tied but had been told that if I did that then my exams would no longer be covered under my health care plan because I would no longer be considered a “fertile woman”. Each time the people at Planned Parenthood had mentioned the IUD, I had dismissed the idea but when this naturopath whom I really trusted started talking about it in such glowing terms, I listened and was pretty quickly convinced to give it a try. She originally wanted me to get a hormonal IUD called the Mirena but when I told her that I really did not want to take any hormones, she told me that there was this other copper kind called the Paragard that was “non-hormonal”.

The copper IUDs are touted as “non-hormonal” but I am positive that it caused many hormonal imbalances inside by body. One explanation that describes why this might happen is that the copper causes our bodies to create prostaglandins. This function is one of the reasons that it works; however, prostaglandins are also intimately associated with hormone production; so increasing their production can and does sometimes cause hormonal changes to occur. Inversely, hormonal IUDs can lead to a state of copper toxicity. Even though we start in different places, we end up with similar clusters of problems.

She repeatedly told me the IUD was “super safe” and effective and that the biggest thing that I had to worry about only was a slight increase in bleeding and some discomfort during insertion. At the time, my life was super busy and I was excited about taking the fear of pregnancy out of my new relationship; so I told her that I would give it a try and made the appointment without talking to anyone else or doing any other research about the device. Looking back, I still do not understand why I did not talk to anyone else, because if I had I would have realized my own mother had previously had trouble with a different kind of IUD in the 1970’s, called the Dalcon Shield. As it turned out, we did not make that connection for 10 long months.

When I had told my plans to my boyfriend, he was skeptical and said it was fine with him if we just continued using condoms, but since I was so gung-ho about the IUD and had been convinced that it would be “great”, I made the appointment for the next week.

The insertion went well with just a little cramping and when I asked the nurse who put it in about the pretty scary things listed in the literature like PID (pelvic inflammatory disease), perforation, ectopic pregnancy, etc…., she said that she had “never seen those things happen herself”, that she considered it to be “super safe” and that I should not worry about it…… which I didn’t at the time. The only thing she asked me about was whether I was allergic to copper or had Wilson’s Disease, which is a copper related illness. After insertion, the only real advice that the people at Planned Parenthood gave me was that I would need to check the strings each month and come back each year to have them check the strings as well. They also gave me a little card with the date 9 years in the future of when I would have to remember to come in to get the IUD removed.

When I left the office that day, I remember feeling confident and happy that I had made a good choice to prevent any pregnancy, but was pretty shocked at how heavy my period was the following week. I bled for more than seven days and was soaking pad after pad! When I did a little research online, I found several websites which stated that something like that was to be expected with a copper IUD and that my body would eventually adjust.

Another thing that started right after insertion was that my tailbone was suddenly super tender. Anytime I sat down, it would hurt and I was having trouble driving a car. I kept trying to remember when I had fallen to hurt it like that, but could not identify the incident. Several weeks later, my period started again but I was also very busy with work and didn’t really take the time to notice all the little symptoms that I now identify as “early warning signs”. It felt like my life was getting out of control and I was feeling more and more tired, but I just told myself that it was because so much was going on.

About 3 weeks after the IUD was inserted, I went to help my friend who was very sick with cancer. The day before she passed away she suddenly, looked up at me and told me in great earnest that I “needed to get it out!”. At the time I thought she was talking about the tumor inside of her own body, but now wonder if she might have been somehow seeing how that foreign object was already affecting my body in many horrible ways. After she passed, I was puzzled because her death was affecting me so deeply and it felt like I was not able to process the emotions coming up around that event. Just a few days later, the mother of another good friend was killed in a tragic car accident and in trying to give support to her memorial effort I kept having to deal with more and more bleeding combined with just not feeling “quite right” and very unlike myself. It was like I was existing in a different reality that I had never experienced before.

The next few months were a whirlwind and the details of them are pretty hazy to me now, but what I most remember is that my tailbone continued to hurt for many more months, I was bleeding a lot, spotting periodically when I was not actually bleeding, my hair seemed to be shedding a lot, I was more and more irritable, life was feeling more and more hard, and I was often in a fairly negative state of mind. My boyfriend was also noticing those changes, but since we had not known one another long pre-IUD, he thought that it was just a process of getting to know me better.

About 3 months after insertion is when I remember first really wondering if something was wrong with my body. During that time, I had confided in several friends telling them that I wasn’t feeling “quite right” and all of them had told me that it was just because of all the deaths that had happened the year before. They explained that since I had never been so close to death before that just needed to figure out how to process all of those experiences. This explanation seemed to make sense for the strange thoughts going on in my head, but then there were also all the heavy bleeding and periodic yeast infections, urinary tract infections (UTI’s), and bacterial vaginosis (BV) issues which made me wonder if the IUD was doing OK. When I called Planned Parenthood to ask about it, they told me that my body could be doing weird things and that I might feel poorly for as many as 5-7 months before it finally adjusted to having the IUD. They told me that if I could deal with those challenges and bear through this initial time that everything would be great and very much worth it.

By 4 months after insertion, things had steadily gotten worse but the decline had been so gradual that I had not really seen it happening. I was bleeding around 3 weeks of every month and it felt like my life was literally falling apart. I kept missing bills and having to pay late fees made me stress about money even more. I am self-employed so my work depends on me making plans and continually scheduling programs and events, but instead of doing my normal routine I was withdrawing more and more from everyone that I knew, which meant I was also getting less and less work. I could not think straight, was forgetful and easily triggered, kept seeing the darkest outcomes for any event and felt like I could not communicate very well. I was also trying to finish a project that required a lot of email communications and online work but would just sit at the computer for hours without getting anything done. I was curling up inside of my own shell and wanting everyone to go away.

Since I was in a new relationship, my friends and family did not really notice this happening. They assumed I was just spending a lot of time with my new partner and were happy for me. I was also losing a ton of weight very quickly and since I had previously gained a few pounds after my divorce, anyone who saw me would almost always tell me that I looked “great!”. In reality, I was falling apart but had no idea what was going on. My partner was very concerned and trying to do his best to help me cope but I was also feeling shut off to emotions and started telling him that I wasn’t feeling as much love for him anymore.

I was feeling more and more tired and had convinced myself that I just needed to rest and give myself time to recover from all the passings that I had experienced the year before. Having always been someone who pushes themselves a lot, I decided to finally stop doing that. Even though I was feeling super broke money-wise, I stopped scheduling any new work and was struggling to get through the last few jobs already in process, constantly reassuring myself that I would get to rest and recover soon.

Unfortunately, I did not make it. Instead the downhill slide just got faster and started spinning out of control. I had called my naturopath a few times asking about the heavy bleeding and finally went to go see her in person, telling her that I felt like my life blood was literally leaving me, that I was super tired and that maybe I needed to get the IUD removed. The funny thing is that even though I knew the bleeding was from the IUD, I never dreamed that it could be affecting my state of mind. She convinced me that I should keep it in for a few more months to see if things would get better as my body adjusted and told me that taking time to rest would be a good plan. She was going away on maternity leave and told me it would all be fine by the time she returned.

I had been sleeping less and less well over those first 4 months and had been waking up at 2 or 3 am with insomnia, which is not normal for me. After I left her office I was not able to really sleep again at all. I was exhausted but whenever I laid down my mind would race around in circles and I would lay in bed for hours and hours but could never actually fall into sleep. The following 3 weeks were full of sleepless nights, decreasing ability to concentrate and increasingly dark and intrusive thoughts. I had told my boyfriend I needed to be alone so that I could focus on my project; but since I literally felt like I was spinning out of control was wondering if it might somehow be because of him.

I had been resting as much as possible, as advised by my naturopath, but still had a few final things to do on my big project and was pushing myself since there were colleagues who were depending on me. My brain was functioning so poorly that I remember also having trouble figuring out how to feed myself, wandering the aisles in the grocery store unable to figure out what to buy. I was feeling very short on money and like I couldn’t afford to go out to eat, but was simply unable to figure out how to cook anything either. I had been having more and more trouble making decisions of any kind and would labor over every little thing, but then as soon as I had finally made a decision, would instantly be crushed by the feeling that it had been the “wrong” one. It was this pattern that led to my actual “breakdown”, feeling like I had being pushed off a cliff…. or at least when I finally expressed to anyone else what I had been going through. My mind had been racing over and over through some things I had done in my project and had become convinced that due to a small mistake that I had made that the whole thing needed to be thrown away and that it needed to be started over. When I finally got the words together to tell my colleagues about my fears, they told me that what I was saying did not make any sense, that it sounded like I was overreacting. They suggested that I take some time to rest and assured me that they could handle it without me. This is the first time that I really realized that something might be wrong with my mind.

Reality was feeling very skewed and a neighbor who was worried that I wasn’t eating properly suggested that I try to eat more. Since my work was suddenly gone, I immediately went to my boyfriend’s house telling him that he needed to feed me good food since I could not do it for myself. He was very confused and concerned, but did his best to give me what I was asking for. Even so, he soon found me sitting in front of the washing machine, rocking back and forth while muttering that “everything was falling apart”. Not knowing what to do, he took me to my sister’s place, wondering if she had any experience with me acting like that before and hoping that she might know how to help me.

My sister was in school to become a nurse at the time and pretty quickly began suggesting that I go see someone, which terrified me because I felt like I was losing my mind and was very fearful that if anyone found out what I was actually thinking that I would be committed to an institution. They eventually came to the conclusion that I should go visit my parents because they had a room that I could stay in while we figured out what was going on. There was a health clinic nearby.

Ironically, this was all happening on my birthday. That night, I experienced one of the most terrifying things that is hard to describe. My anxiety over “my mistake” had been building in my psyche and I had been racing over the previous few months in my mind… over and over and over. The intensity and fear had been building and suddenly I was seeing a large metal lightning bolt shaped thing come out of the sky and repeatedly stab me in the head, It was painful and I was trying to get away when suddenly the lightning bolt came from the front and pierced my entire body right in my solar plexus area (that soft spot just below the ribs). It did that repeatedly until I was curled up and sobbing.

The next day, I could hardly speak or explain anything about what was happening to my parents; so they took me to a new doctor at their health clinic. Since my naturopath was on maternity leave, it seemed like a good idea to find a new doctor anyways. He had never met me before and diagnosed me with SAD (Sudden Anxiety Disorder). He gave me a pill called Ativan and another stronger medication saying that they should help me sleep and that if I could sleep that things would likely get better. When I took the stronger medication that night, it very soon felt like my throat was closing and that I could not breathe; so the next day I only took the Ativan. It helped me sleep a few hours that next night, but by the third night the insomnia was back in full force and I was also back in the doctor’s office the next day.

The doctor said I should keep taking the Ativan and that I needed to start seeing a psychologist to help me figure out what I “needed to change” in my life. He ran one simple thyroid panel, saying that it was “the only physical thing that might be causing this sudden anxiety condition” and that “the only other possibility was that something was going on in my mind which was unfortunately pretty common, especially among women.”

Seeing the psychologist did very little and none of the exercises or practices she suggested seemed to help me much. Both she and the doctor kept repeatedly telling me that I needed to accept that what was happening to me was somewhat common and that it just happens sometimes. Even though I had never struggled with any kind of anxiety or depression before, they both seemed to simply accept that what was happening was something that my mind was doing to me.

From the start, I felt like something big was being missed and on one of his phone calls, my boyfriend urged me to tell the doctor about the IUD. When I did, the doctor assured me that my problems “could not” be because of the IUD and that I needed to get that idea out of my head. Nonetheless, I spent the next few weeks on the computer searching for side effects from copper, problems with copper IUDs, etc…. It was very difficult to concentrate enough to read through all the links; so I never got beyond the first page of search engine results, but everything official that I looked at supported the idea that IUDs were totally safe and that there were no problems associated with the copper in them. When I told the doctor that I was doing these searches, he told my parents that I should not be allowed to use the computer because it was making my anxiety worse!

From the first night at my parents house, my physical health also continued to steadily decline. My hair loss was getting worse and worse, my hair was turning grey, my vision was deteriorating and becoming more and more blurry, my teeth started getting loose, my gums were bleeding a lot, I started to gain weight, I experienced frequent dizziness & coughing attacks, there was a constant ringing in my ears which became a sort of sing-song sound, I had frequent and almost constant headaches, my legs would spasm quite often, I was frequently constipated and I felt like I was going to die. There were also a few things that were more obviously related to the IUD use but with so much was going on I did not make the connection.

Ever since getting the Paragard IUD, I had experienced increased bleeding and my periods were lasting 2-3 weeks each month with spotting in between. What had started as periodic yeast infections, urinary tract infections (UTI’s) and bacterial vaginosis (BV) progressed into a regular rotation between the three, along with dark brown and stinky blood for 3-5 days at the end of each period. All of those things going one “down there” caused me to detach even more from my physical reality and I had no libido whatsoever.

My anxiety at this point was not something that came and went and I was not having periodic anxiety attacks. I was instead experiencing CONSTANT distress. My mind was racing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

My mental and emotional health was even worse and I was living a hellish existence that felt very foreign and outside of any comprehensible reality. My mind raced constantly and I searched fruitlessly through my entire life experience trying to find some clue to what had caused this horrible shift to happen to me. Any event or interaction caused me to imagine its worst possible outcome in a matter of just a few minutes and these thoughts terrified me, both because they were so dark but also because I was afraid that I might do something to actually bring some of those thoughts into reality. There was a constant sense of impending doom that ruled my days and I was convinced that I was on the edge of having what is referred to as a “psychotic break”. I felt like I had divided into two distinct states of consciousness. One was the desperate side who kept saying that we were going to do something horrible and hurt either me or someone else and that for that reason we needed to kill me in order to protect everyone else. The other side was feeling hopeless and did not know what to do, but kept saying that we needed to hang in there and would figure something out. For the first 2-3 months after starting the anxiety meds, this sort of conversation happened most mornings. When the more desperate side was having more influence, we steadily moved towards figuring out how to kill me.

From the very beginning the doctor and psychologist had been asking me whether I was considering suicide and my answer had always been that yes, I was thinking about it but that I would never do it because I was too “chicken”. This seemed to make them feel like I was not a risk, but nonetheless the plans for it took up a large part of my thoughts. I found a stout rope and figured out how to tie it into a “hangman’s noose”, decided on a stout branch in the back yard that would work well and had my “plan” there in case I needed it. During this period, I also remember existing in a sort of different state of time. It would either move very quickly or very slowly; so weeks and months were passing by quickly. The rope with the noose was more and more on my mind, until after one particularly hard night of not sleeping and being tormented by horrible thoughts, I snuck out into the back yard, stood on top of a ladder, tied the rope to the branch, put the noose around my neck and stood there for what seemed like hours trying to get up the nerve to jump off.

Unfortunately, I now know of numerous stories of women who did follow through with these suicidal thoughts after being changed by an IUD and am very convinced that they were likely going through many similar thoughts, that they were really not wanting to die but instead that they became convinced that they needed to remove themselves from this world.

Fortunately, the fear of what would happen if it didn’t work, what it would do to my family if it did and what might happen to me on the “other side” all kept me from following through that night. Having put myself so much on the edge of actually committing suicide and proving to myself that I couldn’t do it, I subsequently got rid of the rope and stopped fixating so much on putting an end to everything. I was still convinced, however, that I would either be committed in an institution or dead somehow by the end of the year.

This state of mind caused me to withdraw from everyone in my world and I existed in a condition of agoraphobia inside my parents house for many months. They were tremendously worried about me and would ask each morning if I had slept? When I said “no”, they did not know what to do. Their only hope was the guidance being given by the doctor and psychologist and about all they could say was that I needed different medications and counseling. The doctor was worried about how much Ativan I was taking, saying that it was not for extended use and convinced my parents to make me take a different anti-anxiety medication called Paxil. It takes about 6 weeks for Paxil to really take effect but I was so bad off that I did not really notice much difference in stopping the Ativan. After about 6 weeks, I did notice that my brain raced slightly less and at about that time the doctor raised my dose. Overall, it did very little to help the rest of my experience and I was constantly agitated, spending countless hours pacing around the house. It really felt like there was some sort of energy buzzing though my body.

My mom had convinced me to see an acupuncturist during the time that I was tapering off the Ativan and I clearly remember our intake appointment. She read my pulse and asked me if I had anything wrong in my belly area, saying that there was some weird energy blockage there. I told her that I had an IUD but when she asked whether I would consider getting it removed, my body reacted very strongly, so she incorrectly sensed my response as negative and immediately dropped the subject, never to mention it again. This was very unfortunate as I remember feeling really excited inside with the thought of taking it out, but my thinking processes were not clear enough to move forward with that idea at the time. I also had a second person offer to do some energy work on me and when they got over my belly area, I was overwhelmed by the intense energy and ran out of their office.

Both of those things should have made me suspect the IUD, but somehow I still did not make the connection. The months continued to race by, there was little change and my biggest fears transformed into the belief that I would simply remain in that tortured state forever.

Finally, after a total of 5 months living in that hellish anxiety existence, I was obsessively using Facebook trying to help track a local wildfire and happened upon a link to an article about a woman’s experience with her daughter being given the Gardisil vaccine for HPV. She had been given the vaccine in school when she was 12 years old and the following day had experienced her first seizure, which had continued on a regular basis for almost 3 years. The article was describing how the mother had been searching for 3 years online for possible connections between the seizures and the Gardisil vaccine and how the only things she had been finding were along the official line that there was not any connection. When I got to the part where she was describing the day that she first decided to use the word “injury” in her search, a huge lightbulb went off inside my head. I immediately did a new search for “IUD injury” and (just as the woman in the article had described) was taken to the lawsuit pages, which led me to the bulletin boards and support groups. Within a few hours, I was astounded to be reading the personal stories of over 5,000 women, many of them dating from almost 10 years before! Their accounts felt like pages out of my own diary and were describing my experiences in such detail that I had no doubt that the IUD was my problem as well.

The nurse practitioner who performed the removal immediately told me that she never recommended the Paragard IUD as she thought it caused too much bleeding, but said that she did recommend the Mirena, which is a hormonal IUD. Funnily enough, while we were in the exam room, she had to suddenly leave following a loud “thump” in the other room. It was because a woman in the other room had passed out and fallen off the table during insertion of a Mirena IUD.

My local Planned Parenthood could not get me an appointment until the following week, but I found one for the next day at a different clinic several hundred miles away and my mom drove me down there.

Fortunately, my removal went really smoothly and I only felt a slight pinch and moment of light cramping. While I was still in the office, I started to feel better and by the time I left the clinic, it felt like the dark clouds had parted and the sun had come out. I literally felt like dancing and that I was happy and smiling for the first time in over 6 months! My body was giving me a huge “Thank you for finally listening” hug and when I left the clinic I immediately told my mom I wanted to go out to eat somewhere, which delighted her after 5 months of me being terrified of any public space. From that moment on I began feeling more and more like myself and am still convinced that removing that IUD was the single best thing that I have ever done!

My Paragard IUD was casually thrown into the waste basket without a second thought and when I asked the nurse if she was going to report that I was getting it removed due to a host of problems, she said NO, that there was no protocol for reporting removals. When I asked if I could keep my IUD, she looked at me like I was sort of crazy, but I grabbed it anyways. Fortunately, the copper was all still there, it did not look corroded at all and the IUD was in one piece. After years of being on support groups, I now know that IUDs can and do break during removal, which can cause a host of severe problems which I feel very grateful to not have had to deal with.

I quite quickly came to realize that the myriad of issues that we are experiencing are being caused by both kinds of IUDs and that we ultimately are ending up in similar places, even if we are getting there by different routes. Also, all IUDs are foreign objects inside of our bodies and, especially since my anxiety disappeared so quickly, I theorize that much of what is happening might be in response to a sort of “body invasion”, meaning our bodies are trying to tell us that something is not right.

Since the support groups that I had found required approval to join, I had not read the posts to be found there until after my removal. The original bulletin board I had found was only about copper IUDs and it had stopped being used frequently just a few years before; so I did not communicate with anyone else before my IUD removal. If I had read more beforehand, I would most likely have had more feedback to give the nurse about what was being experienced by users of both the copper and hormonal IUDs; but at the time was still pretty convinced that it was a problem only with the copper and not the device itself.

Those first few days post removal were monumental and the dramatic changes in my body and mind were quite obvious to my family. My anxiety was almost gone that very same day of removal, my hair completely stopped falling out on the second day and I was able to sleep on the third night (for the first time in 6 months!). All of the other issues started disappearing and by the end of the week I no longer experienced difficulty speaking, ringing in the ears, headaches or dizziness. I also started my period just a few days after removal and it was a “normal” flow and length of just 4 days.

The main reason most people do not think that these things are happening is that they are not commonly talked about, especially in mixed company or outside small family groups, but there are countless stories out there if you bring up the subject. If every experience of every woman who has either had or has an IUD could be accurately recorded, I am very convinced that it would show a pretty large number of problems that might even be considered common. Since the data is not being collected, we cannot know for sure.

Even though I was feeling incredible right after removal and felt like I did not the meds at all, I was still taking large doses of Paxil, which needs to be discontinued gradually; so I started reducing my dose by half every 4-5 days until I finally started feeling a little “gritty” at a pretty low dose. I stayed at that dose for about a month while working on other protocols and then quite easily tapered off of the medication with no problems. The anxiety and insomnia have never returned and as the months passed, my vision became less and less blurry, my teeth & gums improved and my libido returned.

When I first figured it out, my naturopath told me that she still stands by IUD and that she thought I was one of those “rare few” who has had to suffer so that everyone else can be better off. At the time I believed her, but very quickly came to realize that my experience simply cannot be considered “rare”. Since I had been sick and hiding away for 5 months, most people that I saw would immediately ask where I had been and I decided to be super up front and honest in my response. When I would share a quick version of my story, there would almost always be at least one person who also had their own experience to share, sometimes their personal story and sometimes the personal story of a friend, partner or family member.

A very important part of my recovery was the myriad of IUD support groups that are out there. The one that I became the most involved in is on Facebook and is called IUD Side Effects Support & Discussion. When I joined in September 2015, there were 1800 members, by April 2019 we had almost 15,000 active members, and right now (February 2021) we have over 25,000 members! In that time, at least 20,000 other members have joined, made the connection between their IUDs and their problems and then moved on.

The number of IUD support groups on Facebook has also quadrupled in that time; so that there are now easily in excess of 50,000 women on Facebook alone who are either sharing or benefiting from the stories that are shared. There are also several Yahoo Support groups and bulletin boards. Many of the women in the groups still have their IUDs but most are either planning removal or in recovery following removal. Knowing that we are not alone and that there are others out there who understand what we have been through is almost as important as getting first hand knowledge from women who have already been dealing with a particular issue. We learn from one another, support each other and are making a big difference in the lives of new members who arrive in desperate need of what we can share with them.

We are working towards informing both physicians and current IUD users about the “Early Warning Signs" which might show that the IUD is not working for that person. By adequately informing ourselves, we can make empowered choices in regards to our health and our birth control choices and my hope is that such information can help save other women from struggling needlessly like so many of us already have.

My frustration and anger at having suffered for those many months when so many other people had already been through the same things many many times before led me to create an organization called IUD Awareness, which I initially envisioned as a hub for finding & sharing information about the myriad of story sharing efforts out there. Both the website www.iudawareness.org and the IUD Awareness Facebook page are packed with links to articles, notes, videos, places to share stories. They are the medium through which countless people first find the critical information that they so desperately need in order to re-claim their health and well being.

I am deeply grateful to my family who supported me both financially and physically for over a year so that I could focus on my health & IUD Awareness outreach work. I believe that such a gift was a big part of why I recovered so quickly. By doing what I could to support my lymph system and liver in doing their uber important jobs of removing toxins, my body was able to take care of what it needed to do to clean house. Even though there were many times in that first year of my recovery that were a bit of a rollercoaster of ups and downs, there was always a strong trend toward improvement and getting more and more back to myself. No day since removal has been even remotely close to as bad as every day with the IUD.

Over the past 5 years, I have struggled with hormonal imbalances, inflammation, irregular cycles, fibroids, ovarian cysts, breast cysts, hot flashes, weight gain, swollen ankles (edema), complex thought difficulties and slightly decreased stamina. All of these things have been a part of my life to varying degrees as the years have passed. Details on the Recovering from the IUD - Revisited Blog Post.

Even now, more than 5 years after removal of the Paragard IUD, I still struggle with a few problems that I believe are related to having that device inside my body for that 10 month period. Weight gain, hot flashes, swollen ankles and general inflammation have been persistent.

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IUD Awareness is constantly growing as more and more users share their stories with one another. The more stories that are put out there, the greater the chance that they will be happened upon by those whom have been sick but did not know why.

Everywhere I go I meet at least one or two women who are either having IUD trouble or have had IUD trouble in the past. This is a growing problem and a IUDs continue to increase in popularity; so will the number of women who become ill. It is only by acknowledging these problems, talking about them openly and making them common knowledge that we can help one another be healthier and empower ourselves to better understand the impacts that our birth control can have on our lives.

- Tamara Wilder