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When Michelle Morton woke up one morning with a mysterious pain in her lower abdomen, she had no idea that it would plague her body for the next four years.
"It felt very similar to trapped gas," the mother-of-three, who lives in North Carolina, told Cosmopolitan.
Several weeks later Morton visited her ob-gyn, who referred her to a gastrointestinal specialist; but they both agreed that everything looked perfectly normal.
Weeks turned into months, and each morning Morton continued to wake up feeling like she was about to get her period—bloated, sluggish, tired, etc.
"I bounced around between my gynecologist, gastroenterologist, and urologist," she explained. "But nothing was ever found. And the pain wouldn't go away."
As years passed, Morton was forced to let go of the business she owned because her health continued declining.
When her adrenal glands started failing, Morton ended up visiting three different endocrinologists—hormonal specialists—but every test came back negative.
Four years went by before Morton, who felt certain that her body was literally shutting down, solved her own medical mystery.
In October 2015, Morton stumbled upon an article on Facebook about a birth control implant called Essure.
After thousands of women had reported extremely harmful side effects of the implant, the article revealed that the FDA had held a panel meeting to reevaluate Essure’s safety.
"My chin dropped," Morton told Cosmopolitan. "This made absolute sense."
Just before she started experiencing abdominal pain in 2012, Morton had opted to have Essure implanted into each of her fallopian as a permanent form of birth control.
Essure has been marketed as a nonsurgical option for women who are considering getting their tubes tied, but lately the device’s manufacturer, Bayer, has been hit with a slew of serious complaints.
After reading the eye-opening article, Morton demanded to see all her medical records to map out an accurate timeline of her symptoms once she had Essure implanted.
"When it was all there in black and white, it was very eye-opening," she said. "It really made a huge difference to go through and write everything out."
Since connecting the dots, Morton has joined a closed Facebook group called “Essure Problems,” which already has 27,000 members.
For Morton, the damage that the Essure implant caused was so severe that she and her doctors decided it would be best for her to have a hysterectomy.
Just six weeks after the surgery, Morton told Cosmopolitan that she could already feel her symptoms vanishing.
"I feel so much better," she said. "I'm hoping it stays like this."
