(Health.com) -- Ginny Bank was 14 when her mother sat her down and said they needed to see a gynecologist. While pregnant with Ginny in the mid-1960s her mom had taken a synthetic estrogen known as diethylstilbestrol (DES), which at the time was prescribed to prevent miscarriages and complications. Later that decade, however, doctors connected the drug to a rare form of vaginal cancer that was turning up in young women exposed to DES in the womb. Bank's first Pap test came back abnormal. Over the next several decades she endured countless abnormal results, biopsies, and preventive surgeries, but fortunately she never developed cancer.
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DES linked to vaginal cancer in young women exposed to drug in the womb
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DES daughters at higher risk for reproductive complications, study says
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DES-exposed women 82% more likely to develop breast cancer after 40
But in her early 30s @placeholder came up in a different context, when she consulted a fertility specialist after trying for several months to get pregnant.