When The One Percent Is Someone You Love

Sara (not her real name) is the daughter of a close friend of mine. I have known her since she was a little girl and love her dearly. She’s always had a sunny disposition and outgoing personality but all that changed in January of this year.  Out of the blue she began feeling depressed and emotional.  Her mother became worried about her and confessed to me that Sara was having a hard time. We both began praying and Sara’s mom insisted she go to the doctor for a check up. The doctor couldn’t find anything and told her she was suffering from stress.

Weeks went on and the symptoms continued. Sara began losing weight and having panic attacks. Then something happened. It snowed where Sara lived. Not just a little, but day after day. It was so bad she didn’t leave the house for a week.

About a week later Sara’s mom called me. “You aren’t going to believe this,” she said, “but we know what was wrong with Sara.”

While Sara was snowed in she ran out of her birth control medicine and didn’t get it refilled. After five days of being off the medicine she woke up one morning and suddenly realized she felt “normal.”

“It was like someone flipped a light switch,” Sara told her mom. “I have my life back!”

Sara took a medication called Yaz and had no problem with it, but when she went to get it filled in January the pharmacy switched her to a generic drug called Gianvi.  The pharmacist assured her it was the same as what she had been taking and did not warn her about side effects.

According to all the information we could find on the Internet there is a one percent chance of side effects.  That may not seem like much but when someone you love is in that one percent, it changes the way you think about it.

I am so glad things worked out for Sara, but I am scared for other young girls who might also experience side effects. If you know someone taking birth control pills who is experiencing similar symptoms, tell them about Sara and tell them to talk to their doctor immediately.

Thank you Lord for answered prayers!

What the warnings say….

The most frequent (> 1%) treatment-emergent adverse events, listed in descending order, reported with the use of Gianvi in the acne clinical trials, which may or not be drug related, included: upper respiratory infection, metrorrhagia, headache, suspicious Papanicolaou smear, nausea, sinusitis, vaginal moniliasis, flu syndrome, menorrhagia, depression, emotional lability, abdominal pain, gastroenteritis, urinary tract infection, tooth disorder, infection, vomiting, pharyngitis, breast pain, dysmenorrhea, menstrual disorder, accidental injury, asthenia, sore throat, weight gain, arthralgia, bronchitis, rhinitis, amenorrhea, and urine abnormality.