Yaz victim says blood clots 'could have been avoided'
May 11th, 2010 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
The stories have become too familiar. Young women mysteriously stricken with life threatening blood clots, a direct result of their birth control pill. Leanne Letendre is one of the latest victims. Just last year the young mother became extremely fatigued while doing housework. “I couldn’t even make it up a flight of stairs. I had to go up three stairs, stop and then finish,” she told WBZ-TV. “I was so sick, I couldn’t even think.”
Leanne was diagnosed with dozens of blood clots in her lungs that at any moment could have killed her. “They were just everywhere. It was shocking…” she said. But what was even more shocking is that Leanne was told by her doctor that Yaz, the fourth-generation birth control pill that had become the most widely prescribed oral contraceptive on the market, was to blame for her malady.
Leanne has since learned she was not alone. There are thousands of women who had suffered as bad a fate as she. Some didn’t survive. More than 1,000 lawsuits have been filed against Bayer, the maker of Yaz, claiming the drug company didn’t adequately warn women of the dangerous side effects associated with Yaz.
Bayer maintains that Yaz is no more dangerous than other birth control pills on the market. Victims discount that claim. Despite the lawsuits, Bayer recently updated the labels of Yaz and its other birth control pill, Yasmin, to include warnings of serious adverse events including blood clots.
While Leanne was lucky to survive her blood clots, her life is not the same. The clots remain in her lungs, causing her shortness of breath, and she has to take powerful blood thinners, which raise her risk of bleeding so she has to limit her activities. “I’m very, very angry,” she said. “I might not ever be 100 percent, and it could have been avoided.”