Jennette McCurdy recounted a frightening and unique ordeal when she began using Accutane to manage acne. During the latest episode of her “Hard Feelings With Jennette McCurdy” podcast, the 31-year-old writer and producer revealed that she had an “awful” pregnancy scare after visiting the dermatologist.
While recounting the full incident, the Nickelodeon alum pointed out that in order to use the acne medication, “You have to take a test to show that you know all the risks involved, and you have to sign a contract saying that under no circumstances will you get pregnant while taking Accutane.”
“You have to be on two forms of contraception,” she continued. “You have to go and you have to get bloodwork once a month. You have to go to your dermatologist after getting your bloodwork every month just to check up.”
While taking the medication, Jennette decided to cancel an upcoming dermatologist appointment, but the receptionist called her back, imploring her to keep the scheduled appointment. After calling the former actress back a second time, Jennette heard the change in her tone.
“The receptionist sounds stressed out,” the I’m Glad My Mom Died author noted. “She goes, ‘Hey, so I spoke to the dermatologist again, and she says you really need to come in.’ I’m like, ‘What the f**k?’… I go, ‘Can I just come in next week?’ She goes, ‘No, because we got the results of your bloodwork and there’s a pregnancy.’”
Upon hearing the news, Jennette remembered her head “spinning” and feeling “dizzy” while “recounting recent sexual activities” to try to figure out how she could have been pregnant.
“Even now, repeating it, my heart is pounding. Oh my God. It was so terrifying,” she pointed out before describing what her thought process was at the time. “How is this possible? How could this be? What happened? What wasn’t working? How did this happen? … I’m in the backseat of an Uber. I’m dizzy the entire way, feeling like I’m going to pass out or throw up or both. Awful. Terrible.”
After arriving at the doctor’s office, Jennette was shocked when she was asked, “So, is there a chance you could be pregnant?”
“I’m like, ‘What? You said I was pregnant. You said there was a pregnancy. What do you mean is there a chance? It sounds like you know there’s not just a chance, that there’s a certainty. You called me here, hun. You said I was pregnant,'” the former iCarly star recalled. “She’s like, ‘Well sometimes there can be false pregnancies that come up on these because of your hormone levels because of the medication’… I’m like, ‘What? Why would you not say that this was not a certain thing right off the bat?’”
The doctor had hr take a second blood test, and she discovered that she was never, in fact, pregnant. “But that experience was so terrifying that I was like, ‘I’ve got to get off this s**t. This is not for me,’” she elaborated, before noting, “That was years ago.”