Doctor dismissed my concerns about bone density loss when taking Visanne.

Two weeks after my laparoscopy, I went back to my doctor for check-up. She asked me if I was taking my Visanne, so I had to be honest and say something like “no, I did my research and found out the negative impact that the drug has on bone density so I got scared.”

She’s a very strongly opinionated person. She was immediately like, “that’s not your concern right now,” talking about the risks of the cysts growing into tumours and how I should be focusing on that instead. She said that Visanne is a revolutionary drug that helped so many patients and that the side effects I’m mentioning are basically nonexistent for someone as young as me. She was very impatient with me as I was asking her about bone density concerns, although that might be her personality in general. She kept talking about how osteoporosis will practically never happen to someone my age. But if bone density loss happens as a result, isn’t that a health issue regardless of its severity?

There’s a paper published in the NIH titled “The Long-Term Effect of Dienogest on Bone Mineral Density After Surgical Treatment of Endometrioma.” Talking about how not only that there was a significant loss of bone density recorded across the board over the 3 years of study, but also that most density loss occurred in the first year. I do not understand how she did not bring this up the first time she prescribed me this medicine and how I was expected to just take it unaware of what it might to do to my bones. It doesn’t seem like a minor side effect to me. I don’t understand how women’s health is handled this way and why my opinion as a patient is treated like it doesn’t matter.