Canadian woman blames Yaz for year-long illness
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Drug company Bayer is facing more than 1,100 lawsuits alleging its popular birth control pill