no pill for "old"

I splashed cold water on my face and, cross-eyed, I watched the soapy water drip off the end of my nose into the sink. It's already July 1, I thought, half the year gone. How old am I? 27. No... that's not right. I was born in '82... it's 2010... I'm 28. How am I 28? Shit, I'm almost 30. Old. My heart palpated in my chest a little as I reached for the navy hand towel. I remember that show, 30-something, that was on when I was a kid. My mother used to watch it, and I remember thinking how old they were, how adult-like, and how long it would take for me to get there, there where my mother was too. And yet now I'm here, and she's quickly approaching 60 herself.

As I was sitting in the puce vinyl chair at the doctor's office this morning, flipping through a somewhat sticky copy of Lucky, I finally heard my name called so I stood up and walked down the hall, obediently following the nurse in purple scrubs. Thirty minutes and three games of iPhone soduku later, my doctor finally came in to talk to my about my birth control options. She pulled out the little green pill book from the pocket of her white coat and flipped to the page that had my original triphasic pill listed.

Basically, she said, I have four options:
1- Try an IUD. Not recommended because I haven't had children, therefore my cervix may have trouble accepting it. Plus she had a patient whose IUD got lost and she got pregnant-- that's how she found out it was gone. Not good for a control freak like me.
2- Try the ring. Good because it's less to remember than the pill and it's low-dose estrogen, but it's different progesterone from my current pill so it may cause side effects, one of which is going crazy.
3- Try the generic for my current pill. A good, cheap option.
4- Switch to another pill, a low estrogen pill, that has the same estrogen and progesterone as my original pill (hence the same medically as the generic too). Recommended because I'm getting older and need to be on less estrogen in order to prevent blood clots.

She used those words, getting older. Nonetheless, we went with option 4 for now. She gave me six sample packs of Loestrin 24 Fe as well as a card that will get me the prescription for less than $24 a pack for a full year. I can't beat six months free followed by 1/3 price pills, not even with a generic. She thinks this will work for me since it's medically the same hormones and also a lower dose. And she kept saying we need to prevent blood clots now that I'm older and that when I'm 34, I need to switch to either an IUD or something non-hormonal. Apparently that's a you're-too-old cut off point. But that's years and years away, right?