Akelle Waguma
I had just gotten to college, and I was putting up with my Aunt at that time. To cut it short, she was a liar, a big one, and crazy too- you can imagine that combination. Anyway she could make me laugh and cry too! But that is a story for another day.
One weekend her friends came to visit her at the house. I was in the kitchen preparing their meals. As the loud laughter kept renting the air, I decided to eavesdrop and listen to what was really making them laugh so loudly.
Apparently, one of her friends had gotten pregnant right after delivering. And she did not know about it way into her sixth month. Then my aunt's voice came, " I don't use contraceptives at all, I go the natural way, and I have managed to keep my children well spaced" I did not wait to hear the rest, this was clearly grown up talk.
A month after this, I got unwell, and went to her medicine cabinet to get drugs-this was not a very bright thing to do- but I did it anyway. I was really feeling nasty and wanted something to cool my pain.
The only drugs in the cabinet were some little yellow tablets that I consumed three at a go - Stupid huh!- they were tiny, and I figured out that just two would not work.
After taking the three, I cut like 6 more pills and kept them in my bag, just in case I needed to proceed with the medication.
I did not get to use the six as I got better soon after.
But I kept them with me. It was just about Christmas, and each holiday I had to travel home and spend time with my family.
During Christmas we sometimes go to the rural areas, and this was one such time.
So one day, as I was removing things from my bag, the pills that I had self prescribed from my aunt's medicine cabinet, fell down at my mothers feet. She picked them up and the expression on her face was grave.
Innocently I asked her for my pills back. She looked at me and asked, " Judy you are taking birth control pills?"
Okay that was a shocker to me too. One, I did not know that these tablets were contraceptives, and two, I remembered my aunt bragging to her pals that she does not use pills, she goes the natural way.
You should have seen me try to fumble with words trying to explain to my mum how I got the pills. Thank God she believed me. Not that using pills is a bad thing, but because I regarded myself so young as to start using family planning pills, besides I had heard a lot about the effects of the pills.
And my mum, drove in more fear of the pills in my head. She gave me a stern warning not to use pills that the effects are not so good.
That was not a topic I was going to get to with my mother so I shrugged it off, and have constantly remembered her word," don't use Family Planning pills!"
I am a journalist by profession, and still I am not sure whether pills are good or not.
This story has been sparked by my friends illness.
She is a very strong woman, and you will not know that there is a problem until you really probe. She calls me at 7 in the morning, I was nursing a terrible hungover. But the voice on the other ends makes me sober.
She is crying and sounds like she's in so much pain. I call a cab and rush to her place immediately. I find her bent, touching her stomach and in great agony.
Immediately I rush her to the hospital, and they find out that she has cysts -she has known for a while though- and it had burst, that's why she was in great pain.
I have known of cysts, but never really bothered to find out about them. Even when she came to me with her scans,which looked almost she was having a baby.
But what pushed me into searching for these cysts, is when she went to see her doctor again, and was told she had to use family planning pills.
I actually told her that she will grow fat, and have huge........that was my ignorance talking.
The much I know about family Planning is so negative, that nowadays I do not say anything out loud.
The reason why the doctor prescribed Family Planning pills to my friend is mainly to control her hormones.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a health problem that can affect a woman's menstrual cycle, ability to have children, hormones, heart, blood vessels, and appearance.
With PCOS, women typically have high levels of androgens. These are sometimes called male hormones, although females also make them, missed or irregular period and many small cysts in their ovaries. Cysts are fluid-filled sacs.
Functional cysts commonly occur around mid cycle, when a follicle destined to become an egg fails to mature. Instead of leaving the ovary in the process known as ovulation, it remains inside, floating in a tiny sac of fluid.
It is that sac that eventually forms into a cyst. Although rarely malignant, ovarian cysts lead to 200,000 hospitalisations in the US each year. For some women, the cysts develop cycle after cycle, previous studies have shown.
Because birth control pills block egg development and ovulation, they were used intuitively by doctors for many years as a treatment to stop the cysts from forming.
But the advent of the new, lose-dose oral contraceptives changed that presumption. While the new pills still contained enough hormones to block ovulation and prevent pregnancy, they were no longer potent enough to override the body's own chemistry involved in cyst formation.
For gynaecologist Dr Rachel Masch of New York University, the new finding is no surprise because evidence has been mounting for some time that low-dose pills do not affect cyst formation.
She adds, however, that because the study found a small number of women for whom the treatment worked, there remain some circumstances under which she might still prescribe birth control pills for this purpose.
"If a woman wanted to use a pill for contraception, or to help clear her skin, for example, and she also had recurring cysts, then it is still reasonable to give it a try as a treatment," Masch says. In most cases, though, other hormonal treatments are more likely to help. Therefore family planning pills can be of importance is various ways, when well prescribed by the doctor.
