World Contraception Day September 26, 2011Contraception at St Lucy’s: As returning readers know the faculty and students at St Lucy’s take contraception very seriously. Using an effective method of birth control correctly permits worry free participation in intimate aspects of the curriculum as well as recreational sex. There is of course the problem of STIs some of which have become life threatening in the last 25 years with the possibility of contracting HIV. We minimize the likelihood of students being exposed to STIs by having the males employed as instructors and lab partners for students tested frequently with full STI panels and since it’s possible that students can have sex with men other than their instructor/partners the girls are tested as well. Rather than male condoms Student Health advises students to use the nitrile FC2 condom while being intimate with men who have unknown sexual histories. The FC2s wide anterior opening offers far better protection for the student’s vulvar tissues than if her partner wears a male condom. Emergency contraceptives, Plan B one step (effective for up to 72 hours after a birth control failure) and ella (effective for up to 120 hours after a birth control failure) are available free of charge to students and female faculty. And if all else fails terminations using Mifeprex or by means of a menstrual extraction are paid for by insurance every female at St Lucy’s has through Student Health.
Sorority Tampon troubles: I was talking with Taryn’s friend [I wrote about her in my entry for April 14, 2011] who is a second year student at UNLV. She said the school’s Student Health found that three members of her sorority’s cosplay club had their menstrual supplies, specifically tampons, tampered with. This is of particular interest to me at the moment because today I’m CD3 and bleeding heavily myself. Of course I’m not using tampons I’m using a diaphragm for flow control and I make certain that my menstrual and contraceptive supplies can’t be tampered with. Tampering with something as intimate as a woman’s menstrual protection is pretty creepy.
The problem they had is that the three members have come down with pelvic infections that are traceable back to the fact that they were menstrual and all using tampons, though there were three different kinds being used. It’s not Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) which immediately springs to mind when someone mentions an infection traceable to menstrual products, its chlamydia. Chlamydia is probably the most common STI and is known as a "silent" disease because the majority of infected people have no symptoms and it can be spread by oral, anal or vaginal sex. One of the infected women has multiple partners, but is careful to use condoms and says she had only vaginal sex and was symptom free when being routinely tested for STIs when she tested positive. The two other women are in monogamous relationships. One was having pelvic pain and the other had no symptoms, but both went to be tested when their sorority sister unexpectedly found she had chlamydia.
Because both monogamous couples were in a very early stage in their relationships they were just starting hormonal birth control and waiting for the hormones to build up to an effective level so they were still using condoms and their male partners hadn’t been infected. At that point all the sorority sisters were tested and no one else tested positive. The infected women were treated with a single dose of azithromycin and are recovering. Student Health sent the samples to the pathology lab on campus for testing where it was discovered that the samples that tested positive had a tracking agent in the bacteria showing that the strain of bacterium, Chlamydia trachomatis, had been lab cultured by a biology student in the PhD program indicating that the strain had somehow escaped from the laboratory.
Someone in Student Health thought to test the tampons the infected women were using, perhaps because the men in the women’s lives were free of the infection and the bacteria was home grown and they were looking for something that served as a delivery medium. They tested two partial boxes of tampons; the other woman had finished her partial box, and in both boxes they found several tampons with punctures in the individual wrappers and when they tested the tampons they found the chlamydia bacteria with the marker! So then the question became how someone, almost certainly a woman, got access to the women’s menstrual supplies. They are checking the backgrounds of the cleaning crew from a local maid service the sorority uses occasionally, the lab assistants and have questioned the sorority members individually and haven’t turned up anything that they are willing to discuss. But the intentionally spread infection has increased the member’s paranoia and led to all the bedroom doors being fitted with good locks and being kept locked when their occupants aren’t there. Going a step further the members checked all their other menstrual and contraceptive supplies for tampering and found no indication of tampering.
Birth control pill recall: On 09/15/2011 due to a packaging error Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of generic BCPs, voluntarily recalled certain lots of Cyclafem, Emoquette, Gildess, Orsythia, Previfem and Tri-Previfem. As a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy. The FDA MedWatch link is: http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm272199.htm I’m pleased to say that no students at St Lucy’s or any of our escorts are using any of these generic pills.
