Today is Wednesday. But the last pill I took was Monday. Sadly, this happens more often than I would like to admit. I am forgetful and always take extra precautions. But let’s face it I’m not perfect and eventually this will not end well. I dub thee a time for change. In my search for change, I look for few side effects, effectiveness, and safety upon various contraceptive methods, and come across one of the two long active reversible contraceptives. It has over 99% effectiveness rate, but is only used by 6.4% of women. This rate makes perfect sense considering all of the negative associations and fear factors that have attached themselves to the method and it doesn’t help that they have some bad history. The method I am exploring is known …show more content…
The IUD has been around for about 100 years, but the truly effective ones did not appear until about 30 years ago starting with the Paraguard. The IUD gained its bad reputation in the 1970s when the popularly used (but poorly designed) Dalkon Shield brand was found to be correlated with high infertility rates, and high pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) rates. Not to mention the causing of injuries, miscarriages, and 17 deaths. Now I know why my mom is not so keen to me trying out the IUD. Dr. Janet Realini, a well know physician and president of Healthy Futures of Texas, an …show more content…
Dr. Realini confirms this is not the case, what causes PID are Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI). The women using modern IUDs are no more likely to get an STI or PID than women using other types of contraception methods. The only time women using IUDs are more at risk is if a woman has an undiagnosed STI at the time an IUD is placed in the uterus. Kasey Johnson, Health Educator for Healthy Futures of Texas, suggests to get tested especially if you are under the age 26, have a new sexual partner, or have multiple partners because these will lead to a higher risk of having an STI. After insertion the risk drops back to normal after the first 20 days of having an IUD. Set It to Forget It Aside from its effectiveness rate, one of the main reasons 25 year old