Like many of you, I struggled with heavy, painfully long periods when I was a teenager. In an effort to bring me relief and comfort, my mother took me to the GYN in 1995 and they resolved to put me on hormonal birth control to lessen my period symptoms. While the hormonal birth control did indeed reduce my heavy and painful periods, I also developed softball sized cysts on my ovaries. The ovaries would burst and cause excruciating pain.