Some people see a breakthrough in female contraception. Others see a dangerous medical device.

(Washington Post) — One night in April 2015, Keisha Carney tried to go to bed in spite of a bad toothache, which turned into an even worse headache — the kind that doesn’t let you sleep. “I couldn’t stand still. I was up walking around,” she says. She woke her husband, who called her dentist’s emergency line and then drove to a 24-hour pharmacy for pain medication.

The next morning, Keisha had an emergency appointment with the dentist, who looked in her mouth and shook her head. “She was like, ‘What happened?’ ” Keisha recalls. Her wisdom tooth was so infected it needed to be extracted. It was the first of five teeth she’d lose.

Carney, 35 at the time, had never had bad teeth; in fact, she was known for her huge pearly smile. Despite juggling work and a large family, including 8-month-old twins, the Dumfries, Va., resident was in good shape all around. “For some perspective, my wife is a unicorn,” says her husband, RW Carney, 37. “She’s one of those women who wore heels her entire pregnancy, no issues, no nothing.”

But suddenly lots of “little things” were going haywire with Keisha’s body, the couple recounts for me as we sit in their neat, airy suburban townhouse about 30 miles south of Washington. Her hair was falling out in clumps, she was having unusually heavy periods and severe cramps at odd times in her cycle, she was gaining weight and battling brain fog and severe fatigue — even when she’d slept.