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It seemed like a “great option” in a tricky situation.
Victorian mother of three Patrice Turner was adamant she didn’t want more children. But she said her then husband would not get a vasectomy, nor would he look after their kids for the six weeks it would take her to recover from the alternative operation, a tubal ligation.
Patrice Turner arrives at the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday.Credit: Simon Schluter
She was told that if she decided to use the Essure device, with two metal coils inserted in her fallopian tubes, there would be minimal downtime.
Turner said she was told there was a chance the coils wouldn’t be placed properly, and she would wake up instead with a tubal ligation, a risk she was happy to accept.
The 37-year-old also recalled she was told to expect possible bleeding for a short time after the procedure, but otherwise, she said: “I got the sense that it was safe and uncontroversial.”
She said she was not warned about any long-term risks about the irreversible procedure.
Turner is leading the class action against six companies – including pharmaceutical giant Bayer – involved in the design and manufacture of Essure, and the lawsuit claims the device, which hasn’t been supplied in Australia since 2017, harmed many women.
The companies are defending the claim.
In evidence presented to the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday, Turner said in a witness statement read to court that her experience with Essure was far from safe and comfortable.
Turner, the court heard, felt well soon after undergoing the procedure in September 2013, but the following year, she began developing health problems.
She recalled being struck by pains every month, lasting between five minutes to an hour, that were so debilitating that she was unable to do anything else.
Turner said before she had the Essure device inserted, she never had any problems with her period. Her pain was “niggly” at most, and she would use regular tampons and pads.
But she said by 2017, her periods were so painful she would sometimes struggle to get out of bed, and her menstruating became so heavy that tampons were not enough to absorb all the blood.
“During this time, my period would last for up to six weeks. I would have a short time in between where I wouldn’t bleed, and then the bleeding would start all over again,” Turner’s said in her witness statement.
She started losing hair and felt sharp and stabbing pain during sex.
“I wish I never had the device inserted,” Turner said. “If I had my time again, I would opt to get my tubes tied despite the six-week downtime.”
Earlier, the companies’ defence lawyers argued that Turner was likely suffering from a painful condition of the uterus called adenomyosis, where tissue that normally lines the uterus grows into its walls, rather than the side effects from Essure.
In a joint defence, the six companies – which include Bayer Australia and German parent company Bayer AG – said there was no “signature” Essure injury that the women could point to as the cause of their symptoms.
They argue the two principal symptoms said to result from use of the device – chronic pelvic pain and abnormal uterine bleeding – were commonly experienced by women of reproductive age.
“Inevitably, a significant number of those women would have suffered from one or both of those conditions in any event,” the written defence said.
Turner’s witness statement said that in 2018, after her new partner started researching what might be behind her symptoms, she began considering that the Essure insert might be the potential cause, and found other women in online groups who had similar experiences.
It was recommended she undergo a hysterectomy to remove the coils, and she said the procedure, performed when she was 32, resulted in a drastic improvement of her health. Her back and pelvic pain disappeared.
But she said the remedy killed her “fantasy” that it might be possible to have a child with her new partner by IVF, and it felt that by having her uterus removed, she was losing part of herself.
“I feel like Essure has taken a big chunk of my life from me,” she said.
“The years I had Essure in were the years that my kids were young. I feel like I could have been a much better mum … and actually enjoyed them being little.”
The trial continues.
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