Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Monica Dakin lost a year of her life because of her birth control pills.

The 23-year-old Canadian was prescribed the popular oral contraceptive Yaz last May to treat her ovarian cysts. She believed the low-dose hormone carried fewer side effects than other birth control pills. But soon after starting the medication, she was doubled over with abdominal pain. Dakin was hospitalized six times in the first six months before surgeons finally removed her gallbladder in an emergency procedure.

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Canadian Ann Schwoob was just 33 years old when she went to the hospital complaining of chest pains. She was diagnosed with pneumonia, but entered a second hospital days later where she was told she had suffered a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot blocking the pulmonary artery that leads to the lungs. It could have killed her. But what took Schwoob by surprise was what caused the condition – her birth control pills.

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A Montara, Calif., woman has filed a lawsuit against Bayer Pharmaceuticals claiming the drug maker’s behavior was “despicable and so contemptible that it would have been looked down upon and despised by ordinary people.” The plaintiff, Louise Thanos, says she took Bayer’s Yasmin birth control pill from November 2007 to November 2009 and ended up with major health problems, including gallbladder failure. Thanos says she was never warned that Yasmin could cause potentially life-threatening blood clots, gallbladder issues, and other health problems.

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Women who take oral contraceptives, suffer from migraine headaches, and smoke cigarettes are at an alarmingly high risk of having a stroke, according to the American Stroke Association, a factor that is driving down the average age of stroke victims.

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Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) are growing public health problems that affect an estimated 1 million Americans each year and kill as many as 300,000, according to a special supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (AJPM), a publication of the American College of Preventative Medicine (ACPM) and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR). The supplement, Blood Disorders in Public Health – Making the Connection, was released last week in conjunction with the National Conference on Blood Disorders in Public Health in Atlanta, Ga.

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Strokes are considered an old person’s disease, but data collected by a physician in the Ohio-Kentucky area suggests the condition is striking more young people than ever before. “This is scary,” Brett Kissela, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, told the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

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An estimated 20 million Americans have gallbladder disease, a condition in which the bile in the gallbladder becomes concentrated and thickens. The condition most often affects people over 60 years of age, says Dr. Ronald Hoffman, an active clinician, author, radio host and lecturer. However, many young women have developed the condition, thanks to their oral contraceptive.

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Drug company Bayer is facing more than 1,100 lawsuits alleging its popular birth control pill Yaz causes life-threatening blood clots. According to the pharmaceutical company’s 2009 annual report, 129 new suits were filed in November 2009 alone. Many suits have been consolidated into federal multi-district litigation, fueling speculation that more lawsuits are on the way.

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Vicki Parsons had been on the popular Yaz birth control pill for just three weeks when her life nearly came to an end. It started with a pain in her foot that just days later had her in the hospital. She was diagnosed with blood clots – one in her leg and the other in her lungs. It was an odd diagnosis for a young woman with no history of the health problem and no habits, like smoking, that made her more susceptible to blood clots. After a battery of tests, the doctors determined it was her birth control pills that triggered the clots.

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