Teen left close to death after suffering blood clot caused by contraceptive pill
A teenager says she was left "in agony" and risked death after suffering a blood clot caused by the contraceptive pill.
Nicole Leadbitter developed severe back pain and noticed one leg looked bigger than the other a week after she started taking the combined pill aged 17. She was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in her left leg and a pulmonary embolism in her lungs which could have killed her if she had waited much longer to seek medical advice.
Now, three years later, 20-year-old Nicole wants to warn other women to be aware of the symptoms because she didn't think it would happen to her. "I had looked at the general side effects and common ones, but I didn't think too much of the uncommon or rare side effects as I never thought they would happen to me," she said.
"I would urge people to consider the risks of taking the pill. Just because someone you know is on it and is fine, that doesn't mean you will be. And I would also want to raise awareness among young girls that this is a side effect as I didn't know what was happening until I was screaming in pain in hospital."
Nicole began taking the progesterone-only pill Cerazette at age 17 but a few months later was changed to the combination pill, which uses artificial versions of the female hormones estrogen and progesterone, which are produced naturally in the ovaries. It prevents pregnancy by preventing the ovaries from releasing eggs and thickening the mucus in the neck of the womb, so it is harder for sperm to penetrate the womb.
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Nicole in agony in hospital (Nicole Leadbitter/TriangleNews)
The veins visible in Nicole's legs following her DVT and PE (Nicole Leadbitter/TriangleNews)However, it has been linked to an increased risk of some serious health conditions, such as blood clots and breast cancer, according to the NHS. Just seven days after her first tablet, Nicole started to get bad back pain but initially dismissed it. But the pain got so bad that she visited a hospital near her home in Kendal, Cumbria, but was sent home without doctors taking her blood. However, in the middle of the night, she began suffering really bad leg cramps so went to take some painkillers.
She explained: "I then tried to massage my calf and realised my left leg looked a lot bigger and felt swollen so I took a video and sent it to my friends to see if I was just seeing things from being sleepy. They told me it looked a lot bigger than my right one.
"I was in agony and felt extremely light headed so I crawled my way to the bathroom in case I needed to throw up, fortunately my mum had heard me so she came to see if I was okay or needed anything and she looked and my legs and instantly rung the hospital to try and get an ambulance. By this time I was screaming and crying in pain."
In hospital, Nicole was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that blocks an artery in the lung, which usually starts in a deep vein in the leg. "The first question they asked was if I was taking the contraceptive pill and which one," Nicole added. "By this time I had been on it a week and they came to the conclusion that it was the pill."
She was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in her left leg and a pulmonary embolism in her lungs (Nicole Leadbitter/TriangleNews)
Nicole, now 20, wants other women to be aware of the risks of the pill (Nicole Leadbitter/TriangleNews)Nicole was told that she needed keyhole surgery to remove the clots after several were found in her legs and lungs. However, she was found to have a deformation of the channels connecting her heart and lungs which would have made surgery dangerous. Instead, powerful anti-coagulants were used to break the clots up, which fortunately worked, but she couldn't walk for six weeks. She had to take blood thinners for two years, must now take them whenever she travels, and has to wear a compression stocking every day.
Nicole also has the marks from where she was injected and still has visible veins in her legs. Before the thrombosis, she had ambitions to join the army but is now studying marketing. And doctors have told her it is likely she will suffer more clots.
"If I had left it and not gone to the hospital the doctors told me that I could have lost my leg or even possibly died," Nicole said. "They also told me that it would be rare for me to be able to have kids or survive the carrying and labour as they said it would be a miracle if I didn't get another clot especially if I was pregnant, so that's another big lifestyle change to be told at 17 years old."
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