A word of caution: taking hormones every damn day isn’t for everyone. There are medications birth control can react with as well as conditions they can affect negatively. Always consult a physician or birth control clinic such as Planned Parenthood before changing up your birth control. This is simply my own story of how taking birth control continuously has helped me to manage medical issues.
Growing up chronically ill, partially home-schooled, and neglected, there are a lot of things that I had to learn for myself. It’s a curse, but can be a blessing. The self-research and experimental strategies are things that have served me well as a patient.
In 2010, I moved permanently away from my mother. I finally had insurance that I could choose to utilize and began to catch up on various doctor appointments.
Within two months, my Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (SJIA) decided to have its worst flare-up ever.
My face was so swollen that my eyes would swell shut. My fingers were so swollen that it was all I could do to type or drive. I couldn’t stand clothing touching the itchy, painful rash indicative of SJIA. My whole body was just in immense agony.
It freaking sucked.
I had been through flares before. They never felt this severe — perhaps because the things we do as children, when my disease had first hit and was at its worst, don’t require the same movements as working and going to school.
I’m sure that my fibromyalgia becoming incredibly active in this time period didn’t help at all, either.
I was so grateful for having access to healthcare. It took prednisone, a change in arthritis medication, high doses of ibuprofen, time off work, multiple medical appointments, missed classes, and tons of sleep to get over this flare.
But, Kirsten, why are you sharing this unrelated information?
Well, just as I got that under control, I started my fucking period.
I had known for a while that my menstrual cycle and the fluctuation of hormones affected my illnesses, causing an uptick in inflammation. It wasn’t until this flare-up that I realized just how much that increase affected my everyday life.
The flare rose out of the ashes, rearing its ugly head and causing trouble again. I was well enough, in my mind at least, to go to classes, but then I could barely do homework. I learned that it’s not really easy to write in Arabic when you can’t properly hold a writing implement… let alone remember what the homework was.
Go figure.
On top of that, I couldn’t give my hands the rest they needed because of the attention my oozing vagina requested.
If you’re ever looking for a challenge, try changing a tampon with swollen, immobile fingers.
Mid-period, I happened to have a follow-up scheduled with one of the campus docs about my flare-up. I mentioned that I had noticed the correlation between the few days leading up to my period and an increase in inflammation and pain associated with my chronic illnesses.
“You could always try skipping to see if it helps,” she said.
Sure, I had done this a few times in the past — the first time I took my birth control continuously while omitting the placebo pills, I did it to avoid a period on a vacation with my hubby-then-beau. I would do it from time to time throughout college to stop my period from interrupting my sex life.
The idea of skipping my period in order to improve my health had not occurred to me. I wondered if it was really even safe to do. Sensing the worry in my face, she said, “It’s perfectly safe. There are birth control pills out now that only have you taking placebo pills every few months.”
I started omitting the placebo pills every other month at first, slowly increasing the months in-between ‘allowing’ myself to menstruate.
It helped immensely with the pain I was experiencing.
Save a few pills missed here and there due to script issues — something common when taking only three out of four weeks of a medication — I haven’t been off my continuous birth control in a couple of years. I occasionally have breakthrough bleeding and clotting, but there is no real increase in inflammation and pain in my body associated with that.
I have not written off the potential to utilize other forms of birth control in the future such as IUDs, but only if I can get my illness issues under more control. Without the hormones I receive in those tiny white pills, I’m unsure that my multiple illnesses would be doing as well as they are.
Honestly, at this point, I’m scared of the pain that would come if I stopped. I worry that I would have to almost taper down, leaving room for oopsie-babies when my husband and I are intimate or making my days a living hell… and nights, I guess, seeing as how it’s 1:00 AM while I write this.
I’ve already hit a nine out of ten on the pain scale this week with my continuous birth control. Being so desperate for the pain to end, I’m unsure I would’ve survived the day if I happened to be menstruating.
I’ve had a few people ask me if I worry how this could potentially affect my ability to conceive.
Hell, no.
I have had to take such odd medications — ones known to potentially cause infertility — in order to manage my illnesses and live a life worth living. Having kids is, really, the last thing on my mind right now.
If I have children, that will be neat. If I don’t, I’ll focus that nurturing attitude and love to our three guinea pigs and investigate adoption or becoming a foster parent. There are so many children already here who need loving and supportive adults in their lives.
I believe that it would be far too hard on my body in its current state to try to have a kid. That may change but, for now, I’ll settle for quality of life over these what-if’s.
Here’s to Margaret Sanger, Gregory Goodwin Pincus, and John Rock — some of the pioneers of the creation of the pill. Thank you for enabling me to kick my period right in the vag.
Kirsten is a writer and chronic illness activist living in Madison, Wisconsin. She is currently working towards her Master’s degree in Health Care Administration and Patient Advocacy.
This year, her big project is launching an organization called Chronic Sex, highlighting how chronic illnesses and disabilities affect Quality of Life issues such as self-love, relationships, and sex. If you’re interested in helping with this project, please check out their Medium page or find the project on Patreon.
