Now the Pills are Pink
Well, my golden idyll of little-blue-Pill-taking is at an end. It was going so well...manageable cramps, no particular side-effects. Except. Today I had my yearly pap & pelvic exam and my blood pressure rang the bell at 148/98. SCREECH! I was a little stressed from seeing a different doc than usual, but nothing so bad as to justify my ridiculously high diastolic number. So she took me off the Ortho-Tri-Lo, weep, weep. In a couple of days (she said I could finish the cycle) I'll start taking the mini-pill, which is .35 mg of progestin and no estrogen.
The main side effects of going progestin-only are: possibly not getting any period at all (rock!), or getting weirdly timed periods or irregular bleeding (lame!) . And, of course, possibly getting pregnant - if you don't take it at exactly the same time every day your chances go way up. Just mentioning that in case some of you reading this are NOT infertile. I'm, well, not particularly worried about that side of things. The plus side is that it doesn't affect blood pressure or cause most of the other bad side effects of the pill.
I had a little pity party for my fat hypertensionated self, because I had been so happy to finally have a solution to my hell periods. But now I'm somewhat cheered up again, after a really good sandwich from Panera (note: bad news seems worse if you're hungry when you're getting it). Optimistically hoping that the stronger dose of progestin will make my cramps totally go away...as opposed to making my sex drive totally go away!
