By Helen Brown
*December 1, 2020 - SWLondoner*

“In her job at the Shaw Trust, Olivia helped people with mental health difficulties get back into work while her own sanity rapidly deteriorated.
In September, she had a nervous breakdown. She woke up unable to do anything but stare at the wall for what seemed like an eternity. Holed up in her room and unable to go to the supermarket, she ate staple foods and waited desperately for it to pass.
“I felt drunk when I got up in the morning. It was like somebody had taken the spirit level away from me, and everything was on its side. It made me feel like life was not being truthful to me, and maybe the truth was that the world is really on its side, and I was seeing it for the first time," she said.
She suffered from panic attacks and memory loss, and her brain stopped being able to comprehend simple things like reading the time.
“I thought I was getting schizophrenia, or Alzheimer’s. I started hearing voices in my head. It was always two men chatting to each other, kind of like TV or radio presenters, but I couldn't quite make out what they were saying,” she said.
In October, a friend mentioned that she needed to get her IUD removed soon, which prompted Olivia to consider her own IUD.
Researching online, she recognised the symptoms of copper toxicity—migraines, vertigo, schizophrenia—and got her IUD removed the next day.
Her doctor dismissed the possibility that she had copper toxicity, saying it was extremely rare.
To prove it to herself, she got a hair test and a specific blood test which measures ceruloplasmin, a protein that carries copper in the bloodstream, which confirmed her suspicion.”

Read the article for more about Olivia Bowden's IUD story
and how Dr Rick Fischer became such an active advocate
for those who struggle with problems from copper IUDs.

Read the Article