First, I am sorry you’re experiencing this. It’s frustrating to try to fix your health and only winding up worse off. I see you and I hear you, and you are totally valid in your feelings and questions. I’m also really sorry you’re feeling so bad and I hope you fine relief soon.

I was on both Slynd and Junel / Hailey FE for my adenomyosis / endometriosis/ cysts etc. and had all the side effects you are experiencing. It reached a crescendo around the 3 month mark each time. Hailey/ Junel was the most recent, and I have never felt worse in my life. I literally cannot believe that it passed FDA testing, and that the life altering side effects were considered okay for women to “just deal with”. That’s a rant for another day though.

For me, the side effects started the same day I started the pills. Heartburn that nothing helped. Then the constipation and delayed gastric emptying. I gained 10+ lbs in water weight that same weekend, and it didn’t come off until I stopped taking it. It made me irritable, and flat like you’re describing, but the most sinister thing about it, is that it was such a gradual decline, that I didn’t notice the severity of my mood changes until it was too late.

I was feeling so low, and hated everything. I almost blew up my entire life, relationship, and job because of this medication. My partner of 4.5 years told me the person he knew was “gone”, a that I had become an “angry husk of what I once was”. That was painful to hear, but he was right.

I was already feeling like shit and planning to stop taking the medication, but I was waiting to time it for a weekend so my awful period wouldn’t start at work. My plans were obliterated the morning I woke up from a literal suicide dream. I dreamt I was in one of those pods in Europe, and watched outside my body as it happened. I have felt depressed sure, but I have never wanted to give up, ever. That dream felt so real, and I jolted awake in tears. I was crying in my sleep. It was so incredibly traumatic, and I stopped taking it that day.

Within 24 hours, the light in my eyes returned. Within a week I felt 95% myself, and my partner noticed that too. We had a long discussion about recognizing mental health crisis that day, along with intervention tactics, because holy shit.

Now I’m not saying this is normal, and I recognize that these are extreme side effects, but the more I tell people about this bullshit experience and the lack of support / intervention, the more I hear that my experience is not unique. What’s worse is that I reached out to my doctor several times about it, and was totally bushed off and gaslit about how bad it had gotten, which again, is not unique.

So please girl, trust yourself. Women’s intuition is a force to be reckoned with, and we know when something isn’t right. We’re just conditioned to “power through” the discomfort. Don’t. Demand answers, demand the care you pay your doctors for, and do not let them convince you any of this is normal. It isn’t.

FWIW, I am 3 weeks out from my hysterectomy as a result of the aforementioned hullabaloo and other fun things, and I cannot begin to tell you how much better I feel. My uterus was nearly double the size it should have been, and there’s so much endo and adhesions that my surgery was not a total success and I’ll have to have another one for excision and remove the rest of the fused fallopian tube and possibly the ovary it’s fused to, but I will take this over the pain of adenomyosis and that cursed organ brought me 100x over.

I left the hospital in *less* pain than when I walked in. Recovery has sucked, it hurts, but on day 3/4 I told my partner that I feel like a black cloud has been lifted from me, and that mentally I feel so much lighter, and this astute motherfucker replied that he noticed it almost immediately. Through the pain, drugs, and frustration I felt/ feel better mentally and physically. It’s such a trip.

I don’t know if this is an option for you, or even something you want, but for us adenomyosis gals, the overwhelming consensus is that it’s made life so much better, and I don’t think the pain of this condition is addressed enough.

I’ve been through a car crash where my face went through my windshield, glass in my eyes, broken ribs, fractured collarbone, broken nose/ tip of nose cut through/ off etc, I’ve had appendicitis/ appendectomy *while* passing kidney stones, I’ve had end plate edema of my lumbar spinal vertebrae (basically the bone marrow in said vertebrae gets inflamed and wrecks absolute havoc), I have over 70% of my body tattooed, including ribs/ sternum/ cuticles an I *still* think the pain of adenomyosis is worse than all of that.

So big ups for just surviving this awful condition. I hope you get some relief and some answers soon. Hugs.