Essure 0, Super Fertility, 1

The BBQ Pit
41

Chotii, I’m sorry that this is going to be so tough for you, and not at all what you and your husband wanted.

But you’re doing the right thing for you, and you deserve support for that. I take it there is some sort of cervical incompetence (don’t they just LOVE choosing terms to make you feel bad about yourself) and you need to take it very easy.

If you’re a member of a church would you be able to ask for some help? Perhaps some of the older ladies with empty nests in your neighbourhood would be able to help with some baby-sitting and light housework for less than a professional. Is there any kind of government grant or scheme to help people in your position (there is here, but I don’t know about your situation).

Be good to yourself, because this one obviously REALLY wants you guys for parents, and I’m sure you’ll know why when you meet him or her.

42

Chotii, if I recall correctly, cysts are common in early pregancy. Since most women don’t get ultrasounds so early on, little is known about them. The tend to shrink as the pregnancy progresses, though. At least, that’s what I was told five years ago.

I bet baby number five is going to just rock. Good luck.

43

I won’t pretend to understand my parents. I can accept a policy of “adult children stand on their own feet” (except that I know how much they’ve helped my oldest brother and his kids. I can accept…you know, whatever. But I can’t accept “Here, we’ll help you” followed by harsh criticism when I seem willing to accept said help.

Since I went dead silent on the phone when she made that crack, and the conversation simply died thereafter, with little left to do but the awkward goodbyes, maybe she’ll clue in. I don’t know. I sure as hell won’t be bringing it up until we’ve no other options.

Fortunately, there are a lot of options. Last time, when I was in the hospital, women I didn’t even KNOW (except off usenet) came to visit me in the hospital. Those days went by fast. Nurses I’d never seen before went to my house to make pancakes for my kids. Old co-workers came to my house to give the kids a bath and let my husband have a nap. Neighbors took the kids for an afternoon. All we had to do…was ask. We tried not to ask much - maybe that’s why when we did, they were glad to help. I was so grateful, I cried. A lot. I had more help from complete strangers and vague acquaintances than I had from any one of my family members on my side of the family. Go figure.

I don’t get the whole “You have to do it yourselves” thing. Why? Why the fucking WHY? What is so vitally important about self-sufficiency that it applies to health crises also?

Anyway, I saw my OB today. We reviewed the films from my HSG (hysterosalpingogram, a dye study required 3 months after the Essure implants to make sure the tubes are truly blocked.) Neither she nor I can find even the faintest hint that so much as a wisp of dye got up left tube (which is the culprit). She’s sending them on to the Conceptus company so they can review it. They tried to tell her that there have been pregnancies from women who have expelled one of the implants, but mine are still in place. We saw them on the ultrasound, and we saw them in the films from the HSG. We’ll see what they say. She says she’s going to try to wiggle some money out of them to help me through some of the costs involved in this pregnancy (in-home care, whether I’m hospitalized or home on bedrest). I’m not holding my breath. But who knows?

I’ll go back next week for another ultrasound, she said ‘to check viability’. I think she wants to see this for herself, mostly. We’ll meet with the least conservative of the perinatologists at the maternal/fetal medicine clinic, to see if we can get him on our side to allow a cerclage and bedrest at home, since yes, I have serious cervical incompetence issues (due perhaps to DES exposure in utero). Somehow I’ve always managed to get my kids to full-term or close to it, but always with great constant fear that they’ll be horribly early and be in ICU for months (and one of my twins was, for 3 months).

I’m betting the folks at Conceptus throw up their hands and say “We don’t know!”

44

I can only imagine your parents (mother) made the offer in the expectation (Against what seems to be all reason from what you’re saying.) that it would never be accepted. I don’t know that’s the case, just trying to make sense of what you’ve told us.

Well, perhaps. After you’ve put their response through the Legalese-to-English translation tool at Babelfish. Before that you’ll have a two or three page document which, among other bits of boilerplate will be a listing all the things it’s not, followed by at least one allusion to Acts of God.

45

My mother does the same thing. She offers to help my husband and I (not because of a dangerous medical condition, but then gets snide, or refuses to follow through, when I actually take her up on it. Which is why I stopped accepting any offers of money/gifts from her, because even if I hold up my end of the bargain (if there is one), she either says something horribly hurtful about my husband and I, or blows me off.

My dad, on the other hand, helps us out when he can. Unfortunately he’s married to the Harpy and can only do so much.

I don’t even know you, but my heart goes out to you. If you lived anywhere in my area, I’d definitely lend you a helping hand. I take care of my own place okay, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal for me to help someone else out. But I second what another poster said about asking your friends – mine have been excellent in regards to helping my husband and I out when we need it.

46

Spoken like a doctor. :rolleyes: All you need is money for the pregnancy and the next 18 years will just magically take care of themselves. Some doctors are incapable of grasping the concept that not everybody is pulling down 6 figures a year.

You really need to see a lawyer. Your OB is thinking way too small – you need to start thinking about how you’re going to afford a kid you never planned for – a child that, despite being welcome – was conceived only because Essure failed.

IANAL but I think you’ve got the makings of a damn good case. You used their product exactly as it was intended, and you did so because you didn’t want any more kids. This isn’t human error, this is flat out product failure. Those suckers were in there perfectly so they can’t point the finger at the OB or at your tubes for expelling the implants. You used their product because they promised no more pregnancies and it failed. This is why God invented the American court system, hon. JUMP ON IT!

I’m not saying use this as your own personal lottery ticket and try to get millions out of them – all I’m saying is get a lawyer and get what you deserve. If the OB had implanted them improperly, you could sue her for 18 years of normal kid-related costs. I see no reason why this company should, or would, be off the hook because of a freak conception when it’s their defective product that caused it in the first place. (Just because nobody knows exactly HOW it failed doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.) They should cough up the money for all pregnancy related medical costs, lost wages & loss of services/companionship while you’re on bedrest, AND provide you with a stipend every month until the child reaches adulthood. You did everything you could to not get pregnant short of a celibate marriage or a hysterectomy. The onus is totally on them to pay for their product’s defect.

If they’ve got any brains or decent legal counsel they’ll be throwing up a white flag and saying “let’s settle out of court.”

Seriously. Lawyer. You’ve got 2 years to file, the sooner you start, the better.

47

Back up in her second post, Chotii says (bolding mine):

So it appears that they told her, flat out, that it was not 100% effective–very, very good, but not 100%. The company, as someone pointed out above, does not claim a 100% success rate, but 99.8%. So I don’t think there’s much of a case at all.

The company still might be willing to pony up, as a gesture of goodwill or an incentive to not be too public about it, but I don’t think there is any sort of negligence/product failure/malpractice case here.

48

[hijack]
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not allowed to sue, since just about every contract for every product I see nowadays includes a mandatory arbitration clause.

49

What Doctor J said.

Abbie Carmicheal, I don’t think she can sue. Nothing is 100%- sterilisation (by whatever method) included. At present IIRC tubal ligation has a 1 in 300 failure rate and vasectomy is about 1 in 3000. Those rates are for the correctly carried out procedures, not for ones where something went wrong. Obviously if the implant was wrongly sited, or the HSG showed leakage there may be some grounds to sue, but not otherwise.

Really, her OB is being nice to try and get money from the company at all. Failure of the procedure is a very rare but documented occurence (although none in exactly the same circumstances as Chotii).Chotii and her husband were made aware of that and still chose to proceed. No grounds to sue, and the take home lesson is “Buyer Beware”.

Sad but true.

50

When I had my tubes tied, they made me sign a form that said if it failed, I wouldn’t sue. Wouldn’t do the surgery without the form.

Of course, I want another child, but The Bog and I are getting older and decided two was enough.

51

IANAL, but AIUI, such agreements aren’t binding. I seem to recall hearing that a several decisions pushed through by the trial lawyer’s groups have made this sort of thing about as effective for limiting legal liability as a pre-nuptual agreement.

52

Those forms are useless. A good lawyer can pull all sorts of tricks to get you out of it.

Depends on what you mean by not “allowed” to sue.

I could file suit against you today if I wanted to for, oh, sexual harassment. Nobody can stop me.

The suit would be promptly thrown out, of course, as soon as the judge finds out you and I have never met.

I’m not sure a judge would throw out a suit like Chotii’s, despite Conceptus pulling out their “nothing is 100% effective” rabbit. Maybe their failure rate really is only .2%, or maybe they knew during trials the failure rate would be higher and hid those results. The FDA almost never investigates drugs, they just take the word of the companies that are developing it. There’s a lot of incentive to lie. Am I saying this company did so? No. I’m just saying it’s possible, and Chotii’s situation may not be the last caused by Essure. Yes, a .2% failure rate (when used perfectly) is great as far as birth control goes – but out of a million women that use it, that’s still two thousand women who will face an unplanned pregnancy, which could be devastating to these families. We’ve seen drugs pulled off the market for killing way less than 2,000 people, no?

At any rate, Conceptus may not want the word to get out that some women have gotten pregnant despite the tubes being put in perfectly, and would be willing to settle out of court to make her go away. They’d look a lot better paying her a coupla hundred grand (chump change to them) than they would going “it failed and we don’t know enough about our own product to explain why.” They’d be stupid not to do a nondisclosed settlement.

It’s at least worth an hour with a lawyer, especially since most provide free initial consultations.

53

If you file a suit without basis in law or fact you in turn can be sued, disciplined by the Court (under Rule 11 of FRCP in federal court) or disciplined by your state Bar association if you’re a member of the Bar, actually.

54

Last time:
[ul]
[li]November 21, negative test[/li][li]November 27, positive test[/li][li]December 10, ultrasound, sac, no heartbeat yet, possible fetal pole, 14 days from + test[/li][li]December 18, Ultrasound, heartbeat, 22 days from + test[/li][/ul]
This time:
[ul]
[li]March 6, negative test[/li][li]March 11, positive test[/li][li]March 15, ultrasound, sac, no fetal pole visible yet, 4 days from + test[/li][li]March 24, ultrasound, no fetal pole visible yet ‘maybe a tiny yolk sac’, 13 days from + test[/li][li]March 31, ultrasound scheduled[/li][/ul]

I’m certain I’m overanalyzing this. The tech today didn’t seem very hopeful, because we didn’t see much growth from the ultrasound a week ago, to today. But if we’d never done that scan, based on the data available, I wouldn’t think anything weird about what we saw today.

I’m trying not to have any expectations one way or another. I suppose the important thing really is that it’s not a tubal pregnancy, and so my life isn’t at risk whatever else may happen.

And as I’ve told my children, some babies choose to stay, and some don’t - it’s up to it, not to us. If this one doesn’t stay, maybe it will have better luck next time.

My doctor told me she’d talked to a nurse at the company that makes Essure. The nurse told her she’d examined the films (the x-rays from my dye study) and she doesn’t think the implant’s even in the tube (implying it had somehow perforated my tube and gone out into my abdominal cavity - all without pain or internal bleeding. Right.) So how does she explain that the tube was solidly blocked in the dye study? Anyway, she was handing the case on to her superior, and my Dr. was still waiting to hear back. I suspect they’re going to say “Not out fault!” and that’s the end of it, no matter what the truth might be.

Also, my doctor now says there have been something like thirty-seven failures now, not five, and not the zero I originally thought. And this was a much higher failure rate than my doctor had been originally led to believe. I wonder if she’ll be so keen on doing the procedure now.

55

My sympathies, Chotii.

It never ceases to amaze me just how strong the biological imperative to reproduce can be, all the way down to the cellular level. I despair that we’ll ever invent a 100% reliable contraceptive, short of actually removing the gonads themselves, along with the uterus.

56

I third (?) seeing a lawyer at least for a consultation. Like Abbie said, your case is what the legal system was made for. You did everything right, you did everything you could, and the result really isn’t your fault. It sounds like somebody somewhere might have some 'splainin to do.

(After reading your story, I won’t even consider Essure for my/my husband’s soon sterilization. )

57

It isn’t that I am certain the product was defective, you know. I *am * a little irritated that this nurse (who works for the company) can look at the x-rays and “see” that the implant isn’t in my tube, when the x-ray tech and my doctor can see no such thing. And I just don’t get how the tube could have perforated my tube wall or uterine wall, as she suggested, and caused me no pain (I never did require so much as a Tylenol after recovery). It smacks of CYA.

I’m not sure CYA is worth messing with the whole lawyer thing. First of all, we can’t possibly afford to hire a lawyer. Second, even if we hired one to take the case in exchange for a cut of any awarded monies, I’m not sure we could prove the company did anything wrong. Their website doesn’t claim ‘no pregnancies ever’. Just ‘no pregnancies in the first 2 years of the FDA study’.

You may be right though.

I think I heard recently that tubal ligation has a 1 in 300 failure rate, and vasectomy, a 1 in 3000 failure rate. Yet my in-laws had two pregnancies after a vasectomy. My OB tells me of patients of hers who have had a pregnancy despite *both * partners being ‘fixed’. I think I prefer QtM’s explanation: biology wants us to reproduce, or my vaguely metaphysical one that this kid REALLY wants to be in our family, to ‘the Essure company fucked up’. The two former are satisfying somehow. The other is just angry-making.

As a side note, I got a quantitative hCG test run yesterday. The numbers came back today: 14,481. The nurse said “Typically at this level, we expect to see a heartbeat.” Except we didn’t see one, nor even a fetal pole, nor any identifiable yolk sac even. So I’m thinking, great, what are we up against here, twins again? But then my OB checked back and said that was a “good” number. I like the word “good”. It really beats “bad”.

58

Proving they did something wrong is your lawyer’s problem. FDA studies can very easily be … well, a joke. The FDA doesn’t check up on anything pharmaceutical companies tell them (and rarely do they do their own studies) and let’s face it … some companies would rather shell out some bucks over a few dead bodies than they would keep the drug off the market, because in the long run they make more money; even if they know up front that some people will die because of the defective drug.

Your doctor found out there’s been 37 failures, which makes me think that maybe the “zero pregnancies in the first two years” thing is not quite true. I could be wrong — maybe they’re a pristine, squeaky-clean, honest company with a CEO that’s a former Eagle Scout. Or they could be covering something up, you never know.

At any rate, it can’t hurt to talk to a lawyer.

59

Yikes, do you recall where you heard that? I think I’m about to have a tubal, but those are some scary failure rates. (Yes, of course, I’ll discuss it with my doc, but in the meantime, I plan to do some reading on my own.) I’m already so damn fertile that I can get pregnant just thinking about it.

60

Giving you a couple hundred thousand to keep you quiet is what’s known as “the cost of doing business.” Hiring a lawyer to go ask them for it is part of the game.

When did I get so cynical?