A young 19-year-old woman has been hospitalized for two months, unable to move and speak after having a thrombosis caused by the contraceptive pill.
“My daughter is lying down, trapped in her own body,” says Stéphane St-Pierre.
Her daughter Lydia has been fighting for her life since May 8 at the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus in Quebec City after a thrombosis. It was allegedly caused by a combination of an undiagnosed hereditary disease and taking the birth control pill, doctors said.
“It’s stressful,” adds the father of six children from Saint-Frédéric, in Beauce.
Towards the end of April, Lydia begins to feel very sick.
“She complained of headaches,” says Mr. St-Pierre. She passed lots of tests at Thetford Mines only to be told that she had viral mononucleosis. “
But on the morning of May 7, his condition deteriorated. She vomits, hears badly and seems very weak. His parents take no risk and send him to the emergency room by ambulance.
A few hours later, the phone rings. The doctor warns Mr. St-Pierre that his daughter must be quickly transferred to Quebec.
“She had urinated on the floor, she was confused. He believes it was a brain mass, a venous thrombosis or a stroke, ”he says.
The doctor then places her in an artificial coma.
“She had blood clots all over her head right down to her neck,” said the father.
On May 11, the phone rings again in the middle of the night. Lydia must have emergency surgery or she will die.
“It was blocked up to greatness. His brain was so swollen that they had to remove a flap from his skull, ”he says.
The doctors then confirmed to the family that the young woman is suffering from a deficiency in protein C, a molecule that prevents the formation of clots in the blood,
This rare hereditary condition “is well known to significantly increase the risk of thrombosis”, recalls Martin A. Champagne, president of the Association of physicians hematologists and oncologists of Quebec,.
And when the protein deficit is combined with the estrogen contained in the contraceptive pill, which also promotes blood clotting, the risk is multiplied.
“A woman between 20 and 40 has a one in 10,000 chance of having a thrombosis,” explains Dr. Catherine Taillefer, gynecologist at CHU Sainte-Justine. If she suffers from a protein C deficiency and takes the pill, the risk is between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1000. “
The St-Pierre people still wonder today how the contraceptive pill could have been prescribed at Lydia.
Still hospitalized, she came out of a coma, but remained almost silent and immobile.
“A doctor has told us that it will remain a vegetable, but others say that a young brain can return to 100%,” saddened Mr. St-Pierre.
Like her brother Bryan, Lydia St-Pierre suffers from a thromboembolic disease, therefore from a predisposition to make clots.
However, the pill also promotes coagulation.
It is a popular, effective contraception, but one of the known complications […] is that they increase the risk of thrombosis, “recalls Dr. Catherine Taillefer.
Despite the family history, no test was done before prescribing the birth control pill. Her father deplores that it is given “like candy”.
“When a doctor prescribes oral contraceptives, he must understand the family history,” warns Dr. Sylvie Desmarais, internist at the Pierre-Boucher Hospital.
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