The Bleeding Edge Page #8

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I thought I was gonna throw up.

And when I did, I heaved...

and my intestines came down

like halfway to my knees.

I had three feet of my colon fall out.

It's in the documentation. So...

I get a towel...

and hold it in.

I run in there, fall out on the floor,

and my husband's like, "What's wrong?"

I said, "My colon's fallen out."

He said, "Let me see."

He sawand then he totally

had a nervous breakdown.

Then, when I got to the hospital,

they didn't know what to do.

They were freaking out.

They'd never seen it.

I get to the emergency room,

and I remember thinking so clearly

that I was dead, like this was it.

They had to call the specialist,

and he said,

"I don't even know if the surgery...

I can't say if it'll...

save her now. I'll do my best."

I have nightmares about it all the time

where I think I'm on that table,

going into the operating room.

You know, just terrible,

terrible memories of it,

and it just never seems to leave me.

It's been...

what, three years?

And I still have... problems.

I have had to give up a dream

of ever having a partner,

of ever being intimate again,

because, to me, um...

penetration means death.

It changed the full direction...

of my life.

It's taken my life away.

I'm sorry I ever heard

the word Da Vinci.

And then, like I said,

every time that I...

hear of more injuries,

it just rubs salt in the wound.

Car wash!

After three years of bleeding,

I ended up having a hysterectomy.

And no more bleeding,

but the pain is still severe.

The pain that I had sometimes prevented me

from going to work.

And eventually, I lost my job.

I had to do this car wash

because I haven't worked for a month.

My doctor just put me on disability...

which could take months.

So I'm out of income right now.

- Oh, thank you so much.

- That'll help you out.

- Thank you. May God bless you.

- Okay.

I can't afford my rent right now.

So I have to move out,

and if I don't find a place,

and without income and proof of income,

I can't get an apartment or anything,

so I'm scared I'm gonna have to be split

with my kids.

Ever since 2011...

we've moved around a lot.

I don't think we've had one place

that was stable.

Ever.

We don't know

where we're going to be at school.

Because we're gonna get another house,

and I don't know

where that house is gonna be.

My mom can't keep a job

because she has to go to the doctors a lot

'cause she gets sick a lot,

and it's just...

It ruins her opportunity of having a job.

It makes me feel sad

that my mom is at the hospital.

It's tough,

watching her not be able to do stuff.

That much more I have to do.

We used to do it together.

I suck now. I'm just cranky and miserable,

in pain all the time.

I'm not fun.

I can't drink, I can't dance,

I can't do anything.

Well...

But at the same time...

You know,

I'm so grateful for what we have.

We have great kids

and a great house

and we have each other and...

we're alive.

How does it affect your love life?

Oh... Oh, God.

- It was terrible for a while.

- Yeah.

- There was no love life.

- No.

- When I...

- With all the surgeries and stuff.

But even when I first had it in,

it was painful.

Yeah.

That part of our life

has been ruined permanently.

It's hard.

Yeah, you don't...

I don't think it ever goes away.

I don't think it ever will.

It's sad because I have seen other

people's relationships die in the group.

I've seen a lot of women

whose husbands have walked out

- over the intimacy...

- Lots.

...the lack of intimacy.

I've seen women suicidal,

women losing their families and...

thinking that there's no reason

to stay alive.

I think it's amazing what she's done...

to help these women.

Facebook is a full-time job for her now,

basically.

She wakes up in the morning...

She's a very determined person.

She gets something in her head,

and that's it.

I started getting random messages

in my Facebook...

from women who started connecting me

with the Gabriella Avina

that was the spokesperson,

the Ask Gaby.

They found me...

and said, "Are you the Gaby

that was speaking for Essure?

Will you talk to us?"

And finally...

uh,

probably about a year of them trying...

one of them said,

"Can you just tell me how your health is?"

And then I listened.

I was fatigued.

I was tired all the time.

Then I started falling.

Just... My legs would give out.

The doctor said

it was an immune response to something.

My story was similar to so many others.

All of a sudden,

it all made sense.

If only they'd been honest with me

from the very, very beginning.

The Essure procedure

can be performed in your doctor's office

and is over 99% effective.

It's 99.74% effective.

It's 99.8% effective.

It's over 99.95% effective.

It really wasn't tested

for a sufficient amount of time.

Most patients that had the Essure device

were followed for about 12-18 months,

and the manufacturer reported

very satisfactory results from it.

But for a product that's supposed to be

a lifetime implant,

to cut off the study window

at about a year and a half

left a lot of questions unanswered.

I was part of the clinical trial

and no one asked me,

"Are you feeling sick?

What is your health like?"

Almost all women

who participated in the clinical studies

rated their satisfaction with Essure

as good, very good or excellent.

The first time I saw the question,

"Rate your comfort of wearing the device,"

I said, "What does this mean?

I'm not wearing anything.

This is something

that's implanted inside of my body."

The nurse said, "Can you feel it?"

I said, "I can feel pain in my abdomen.

Where that pain is coming from,

I don't know."

And she said,

"Then rate it as excellent."

They would say,

"Are you happy with the product?"

I would say, "No," and they would say,

"But you're not pregnant?"

I would say, "Correct."

"Then it's doing its job,

so you have to be happy with that."

The most striking thing is they'd

crossed out answers and changed them

Where it said I was having pain,

they'd crossed it off

and said, "No pain reported."

When I questioned Bayer about it,

they said this is absolutely customary

in a clinical trial.

It turns out

that the vast majority of research

is not coming from an objective source.

It used to be

that about 70% of biomedical research

was funded by the government.

In the last 20, 25 years, that's changed.

Now about 70% of biomedical research

is funded by industry.

They're paying for the research,

so naturally we're going to get

the results that they want to share.

So devices can be on the market for years

and cause many deaths, many injuries

before it becomes public.

A medical device

implanted in thousands of people

that is linked

to more than two dozen deaths...

During emergency open-heart surgery,

doctors removed

this one-inch piece of metal.

It floated in front of our eyes,

literally, first into the right atrium

and then into the right ventricle.

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