Within months of having the IUD placed I went from having normal periods to heavy, painful and overly emotional episodes starting 10 days before I would bleed. Then the anger and fight or flight started. At this point in my life I knew something was wrong already and had moved to California to see one of the countries best doctors to try and solve the mystery. I was tired, my hair had started falling out, I was gaining weight like I had never before and really just felt like something was off. So many blood tests and a surgery to remove my tonsils and glands later and no definitive answer. I ate super healthy and worked out like a beast post my surgery. Nothing seemed to work. (…)

My adrenals in response to the IUD started working in overdrive to get the copper out and tell me something wasn’t right. I had adrenaline and cortisol running through my body every minute of every day. I could no longer relax no matter how hard I tried. I was in a constant state of anxiety and didn’t even know it as it came on so gradual as the copper level rose. A world would make me obsess, someone within ear shot doing something I didn’t like, hell not getting to set up my environment and belongings around me how I felt they best suited would receive these over the top responses. I became paranoid, anxious and emotionally completely detached. I remember one time even crying to my husband how I couldn’t feel anymore and how life had lost its colour and how I felt I had no connection to the world or the people in it, my own child included. While he tried to sympathize I don’t think anyone can really understand this without feeling it. (…) Eventually, I started to blame everything around me. I blamed my family, I blamed the country I was in, I blamed my past, I blamed my work – any story I could come up with why I felt so stressed and detached I would latch onto because when you feel this way nothing is enough, no one is enough or can do enough for me because I could never get relief and relax. (…)

And my physical symptoms kept getting worse. I started getting rashes around my eyes, I would break out in crazy hives anytime I would go running, my periods and pms were getting worse and worse with each cycle, I lost all sexual sensations/feelings and interest and I was more and more going through the actions of life rather than feeling them. I coped by planning, I thought if I planned enough, reached enough goals one day I would feel better. (…) I would be happy and we would sail off into the sunset and I would be able to relax finally in some beach hammock somewhere feeling what this thing ‘relaxation’ people talked about. But, as you’ve already read, that couldn’t have worked because day to day my mental and physical health was being obliterated by the IUD that was still in my body. (…) So after a particular large fight again falling 10 days before I would bleed I said enough is enough and went to the talk in clinic to ask for some sort of pill that would just suppress my cycle all together. This day was the first step in my healing journey. Thankfully the doctor I met with and explained everything to said she would give me pills but wanted to tell me what she was seeing in her practice before she did. She said she had seen over the last couple years a lot of women coming in with the same sorts of problems and a copper IUD. She said most often she would remove the IUD and the symptoms would go away. As she was a NHS doctor she couldn’t tell me why this was happening and knows that all the literature says the copper IUD is safe but could only tell me what she was seeing with her own patients and asked if she could take mine out. Uh, yes! So I had the evil little thing removed that day. (…)

The detox and the recovery were one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It was painful, lonely and heartbreaking for nearly 6 months, I lost so much weight as the copper poured out I was less than 100lbs, but slowly things improved. My moods balanced, the weight returned, and a new vitality showed in my eyes and face I hadn’t had for years – I was healed.