Hi ladies
I've recently asked for a Mirena due to long standing issues with utrogestan, but the more information I find on Mirena the more worried I get. I just read that it contains silica and barium(!) and that the risk of breast cancer is not known. Also in Meno-Mel's recent post I see it can become embedded in the womb and this can result in a long wait to have it removed. I did look into taking Utrogestan vaginally but I found a reputable document (I forget where) which said there is no evidence that the utrogestan reaches the place where it is needed via this route. I am starting to think it might be better to just try and withdraw gradually from HRT. It is such a shame because I find oestrogel really good. I would welcome any thoughts that might help me decide whether to go ahead or not as I am so confused.
Hi Katherine, it is actually Ermin2trude who is waiting for removal, I had one years ago that they refused to remove at the 2 month review, so I had it in for maybe 3 years before I found the threads and pulled very hard, just on an impulse really, out it popped and won't be getting another!
The depressing side effect lessened after the 2 month mark, but it was still too strong to want to live with simply to stop my heavy bleeding.
About the vaginal utrogestan, I can say that I actually, pause to see if I dare say this, but I quite like the effects from taking utrogestan 200mg vaginally (except the mild skin irritation). It's not that I feel nothing, I feel it systemically, only just, unlike other progesterones it's very much in the background, but it isn't depressing at all and any oral progesterone/mirena has always made me depressed. My husband saw this so clearly he had a vasectomy 20 years ago, we had completed our family and he didn't think it was fair for me to take 20 years of the hormones that affected me badly instead of him having a one off operation. I love this man for stuff like that, y'know.
I think they mean young women should only have the coil for contraception after the first child, I was offered it then but refused because I didn't know how it would affect breastfeeding, I enjoyed having more milk than a cow, didn't want to change that!
The cervix is loosened by childbirth, otherwise they can't get in. That would apply to anyone who'd had a caesarean too though. I expect by our age it'd be ok.
Well done on being brave enough to cancel, we should never be railroaded into these things if we aren't sure.
Edit, I've just remembered, instead of removing the mirena when I asked, they put me on antidepressants which I took for the three years, then I stopped them a while after I pulled the thing out.
I asked the doctor how it worked before I had it fitted and she said it was just purely the presence of this foreign object that made the body effect the resulting changes. I asked repeatedly if any other mechanism was at work because I couldn't see how that would work, but she kept saying the same thing, it just sits there doing nothing at all, the body reacts in a certain way to it's presence and that is all.
After it was fitted (early days of the internet, I hadn't the info to hand back then), she handed me a leaflet to take home. It told a different story. The leaflet was the first indication that this thing had chemicals in it and it doesn't just sit idle at all, it was releasing these progestogens into me as I was reading in horror, knowing full well I had been basically tricked, but really I was just treated as a mindless body, a vet doesn't bother explaining to the animals, some doctors are too much like that with women as well. I had told her I didn't tolerate progesterone, so she didn't mention it's presence. I was both furious and strangely hurt that she dismissed my concerns, perhaps thinking if I didn't know then I wouldn't get the bogus reaction I think of as progesterone intolerance? All because she wasn't a believer in progesterone intolerance herself.
