The pill gave me blood clots on my lungs which could have killed me

For any girl not aiming to getting pregnant whilst at university, contraception is really important. The pill can seem like a no brainer in comparison to other methods like the coil, implant or injection – what could possibly go wrong with taking a small pill each day that has been prescribed by a doctor? At least, that’s what I thought.

Unfortunately, the pill has done a lot more to me than mess with my hormones. It has put me through hell and back, and if I could go back I would never have taken it.

Thanks to the pill, I was hospitalised due to a blood clot in my leg which moved up into my heart to my lungs, causing me to have a clot on each lung that could’ve killed me.

Before Christmas I began feeling under the weather, the sort of ill where you feel too groggy to bother with anything actually important but can still find it in you for a pint. I soldiered on whilst feeling slightly gutted to be coughing my guts up on Christmas Day. On the 9th of Jan I realised just how short of breath I was. I couldn’t walk from Division Street to West Street in Sheffield without constant breaks to catch my breath. I was mortified, assuming I must be even more unfit than I thought I was.

That following week I rapidly deteriorated. It got so bad I was coughing up blood, had a high fever, was virtually bed ridden and wouldn’t have eaten a cracker if someone paid me. I was adamant it was some kind of infection that would clear up, but my friend convinced me to go to the medical centre.

The doctor confirmed everything I thought I knew, “It’s probably an infection, it could be Pneumonia, I’ll give you antibiotics which will clear it up”.

I’d been lulled into a false sense of security. Unbeknown to me I was becoming seriously ill and it was only getting worse. I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t even move in bed without struggling to breathe, I was reluctant to drink much because I knew how much energy I’d have to use just to walk to the toilet. I felt totally lifeless. There were two occasions where I couldn’t breathe at all. I was offered an appointment with a nurse but I cancelled because I couldn’t make it from my room to the taxi.

I had a second appointment, which I only just managed to get to and I’m incredibly lucky that I did. The GP checked my oxygen levels. My oxygen was dangerously low in the 80s, the doctor rang for an ambulance and I was rushed to A&E at Northern Genera Hospital. I was in A&E for hours having ECGs, blood tests, a heart scan – anything and everything they could chuck at me. A doctor suggested after a while it could be a blood clot but said that it was very unlikely. I slightly freaked out but bought into the idea that it was rare and ‘never going to happen to me’.

But the consultants in the hospitals were baffled. If I had a pound for each time a doctor asked me whether I’d caught a flight recently, I’d have paid my student loan off. It was clear they thought it might be deep-vein thrombosis which can be caused from long-haul flights.

The next morning a CT scan confirmed my worst fears. I had a large blood clot on each lung, along with damage to my left lung due to the blood supply being cut off to the lung tissue. I spent two weeks in hospital, part of which I was on four litres of oxygen. I needed to be wheel-chaired to a toilet with my oxygen tank, they hooked me up to a drip of strong antibiotics and saline, it was miserable.

Consultants told me that the pill would have increased the viscosity of my blood causing DVT (a blood clot in my leg) which had then broken off and travelled through my heart into my lungs, explaining my extreme shortness of breath. My resting heart rate peaked at 122 due to the strain it had been under. If the clots blocked a main artery to my heart, or had been left to get bigger it could have caused sudden death.

I’m out of hospital now, but I’ll be on blood-thinning medication for six to twelve months. I’m awaiting test results for Antiphosphilipid Syndrome, which is a condition where the blood clots too quickly. You can live with this condition happily and unaware of it but environmental factors can cause clots, the pill being one of them.

If I test positive because I’ve had two pulmonary embolisms, I’ll have to be on Warfarin for the rest of my life which means I could never have more than one pint at the pub. Not something I wanted to prepare for at age 22.

My circumstances are more common than you’d think and it’s not something to be ignored. I was a healthy young woman, but it doesn’t make you invincible to serious health scares.

@lucyypowell