Better The Devil You Know...

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So hi there. A few of you may recall my earlier post about the Implanon chip and the terrible side effects I suffered through until I could get it removed. Well here I am with a follow-up, for interest’s sake. Because hormonal changes take ages to make themselves known and felt.

I switched back to Nuristerate immediately after the chip was removed. I thought it would fix everything instantly, but I was just being hopeful. The general rule is that it takes your body six months to adapt to a new hormonal birth control (did you know that? I didn’t). So I suffered through fluctuating moods and insane cramps, and more for a long time after that.

I’ve been on Nuristerate again for eight months now. And the side effects of Implanon have finally, mostly, dissipated. I still get fairly bad PMS, but it seems to have gone back to the regular once a month cycle. Cramps have also calmed down a lot. I get bad ones sometimes, but not all the time, and not nearly as bad as they were. And the best part is, I no longer trigger cramps when I orgasm.

Yes, that was a side effect. Possibly the worst one. Whenever I’d masturbate at a certain time of the month, and if I orgasmed, it would trigger horrific cramps that would keep me down for an hour or more at a time. It sort of fed a fear in me, so that every time I had me-time, I would be nervous and anxious, and would feel the cramps rising. Which as you can imagine, is not exactly ideal for your own pleasure time. It kinda puts a (ahem) cramp in things. It only occurred to me the other day when I masturbated that I no longer feel that fear. It’s because for a few months now, it hasn’t happened. It was still happening for about four or five months after I had removed the Implanon. I remember wondering if it may be a permanent side effect (eeeek). But it wasn’t. Thank all upper deities.

I was relieved that I never had a sexual partner during those months, because I figured it would be a little awkward to explain why after some great sex I had to curl up in a ball with a hot water bottle and breathe to myself for an hour. How do you begin to get a guy to understand something like that? It kinda opens up thoughts of how people without uteruses see contraceptives, and how it is the woman’s “job” to worry about hormonal birth control. I'd try to picture explaining that to a guy, and could only imagine that he would just think it silly that I did that to myself in the first place.

Then I started wondering why we do do that to ourselves. My reasoning behind switching to Implanon was based on the negative side effects of Nuristerate. I had been on the injection for years, and unbeknownst to me, it had formed cysts in my ovaries. The cysts started to burst after a nurse slipped up and didn’t give me a full dose, causing my progesterone levels to drop. The pain was excruciating. So I switched BC methods, to avoid another incident. And only got even worse side effects for my troubles.

Honestly, it all just makes me wonder if I would ever actually go through with full sterilisation. I’m very tempted to, but just gotta get up the courage. The things we go through just to not become pregnant are insane. Yes, I would love to have sex whenever I feel like it. There’s nothing wrong with that. And no, I definitely never ever want to be pregnant. Nothing wrong with that either. And I wouldn’t trust a condom to protect me fully; I’d need another barrier. Why do we have such a stigma against sterilisation? I’m a 26-year-old female with no children, with 98% certainty I will never want children, and a 170% certainty I will never want to be pregnant. And yet, despite all this certainty it is up to someone else to decide that it is a bad idea for me to undergo tube-tying. Someone older, someone wiser, and frankly someone masculine. I just think it is nonsense. Instead of just undergoing tubal litigation, I have to go through all these experiences -- bursting cysts, cramping orgasms, constant PMS, two-week long periods, increasingly painful cramps. Is there no way to escape this hormonal fallout?

What do our readers think? If any of you have some wisdom to offer, experiences to share, or just glitter to throw, please comment below.