Topic : 04/12 Twin Tug of War

To ohplease:  I'll take your case!

I think that some posters, in an attempt to understand an obscure illness, will make a blanket statement they KNOW will offend.  Conflict and argument can also be tools of clarification.  That's why debate teams are formed in high school and college, so that you can understand two sides of an issue and decide for yourself how you feel about it.  I probably would have just asked a question because you catch more flies with honey.  The power of "nice" is usually more effective in my experience.

Second, ohplease makes a good point about the adoptive parents and any potential rights they may have.  Not only that, but the children have been with them for so long, they may have problems attaching to people or being taken from the only caretakers they've known.

SO, instead of character assasination, lets attack the ignorance, not the poster.  I think that you battle a post like that with information and personal experience.  You may gain a friend out of it.

Dr. Phil , 

         Please do another show devoted entirely to HYPEREMESESIS. As you can see there was a large response from us women who suffered with this terrible disease.  Please bring back Kimber from the HER foundation to educate those suffering, those who have suffered ,those who posted hurtful remarks and those who are unaware of this horrible disease we face to have a child.

Here is an excerpt from your quote.

"let's not take every psychological issue and call it PTSS.  PTSS covers people who have been through experiences even worse than this (If you can imagine that).  Not every crisis falls under PTSS (or PTSD if you prefer).  That makes it no less real or severe, but not the same."

I felt that you did diminish what women with HG do go through because some of these women do indeed develop PTSS or PTSD.

I am sure you didn't do this specifically to diminish what these women have gone through... it was simply done out of ignorance.

Thank you for writing that post so that you and others may be educated.

That was a really great post.

Thank you for better insight into that!

I never want to see a pink bucket again.

I in fact, someone took one from the hospital for me and was very please to throw it directly into the garbage once I brought my baby home.

Yikes! I am sorry you had such a traumatic time! It sounds like you tried quite a few antiemetics.

I myself have tried Reglan and I had a severe allergic reaction to it (my uuvula swelled so that I felt like I was choking, my facial muscles locked in place, my tongue jutted out to past my chin and froze that way, and I vomitted even more).

I was also on Phenergan for a short time and that was no picnic either. I felt really doped up on it and was too drowsy to move, eat, or drink, even if I wanted to. I just had to lay in bed the whole time.

With Zofran (for me), life was so much different. I still felt nauseaous all day long and still vomited a couple of times a day, but I could resume a half-normal life. It seemed as if I was only taking a vitamin that made everything magically a lot better. I did not feel drugged at all.

My point was that HG itself is not a mental illness; it is a physical illness. There can be complicating factors that may lead to mental problems (like with any other severe physical illness) but HG itself is a physical illness.

Thank you so much for your post so that people understand that the meds to treat women with HG are not perfect. Often women are given cheaper drugs that have bad side effects instead of the more expensive Zofran that can be positively life altering.

I reccommend going to www.hyperemesis.org or the HER site.  Then make sure you create a profile to log on so that you can view ALL of the forums.  From here you can talk to other women on this and get their recommendations.  Hope this works!

I'd just like to add that I had been given Reglan 10 years before my pregnancy (temporarily to control vomiting for another reason) and that is when I had that allergic reaction.

I was given this med in Canada where it is called Maxeran.

I told my OB that I was allergic to Merxeran but when she prescribed Reglan to me, she didn't even check to see if these meds were even related... let alone the same med! I took my prescription to the pharmacist who filled it. As they were handing it to me, I asked them to check if Maxeran and Relan were in any way related. They researched it but could not give me an answer. I told them that I would not take it unless I had a satisfactory answer so after more research they found out it was the same med. They then took the Reglan out of my hand and sent me back to my OB. ... My OB told me to take Flinstone vitamins and sent me home even though I was in dire need of help. I ended up in the ER several days later.

As sick as I was, I could not even begin to imagine how sick I would have been had a taken this med. I would have been home alone with a severe drug reaction since the army had deployed my husband and refused to allow him to come back early to assist me.

I was repeatedly told that I had to switch to Reglan or Phenergan. I would not accept that as I knew from experience that my health would deteriorate further. It is sad that in such a weakend condition women with HG have the battle of their lives with the people who they seek help from.

At last, I have waited 20 years - yes I said 20 years for this topic to come to light!!!

I too, have suffered from this terrible disease.  I was hospitalised for almost 8 months, fed burning solutions  proliferally (through the veins in my arms) ,given  gravel, demerol, stemitol, and everntually morphine and for the last 2 months TPN.  Total Parental Nutrition (everything your body needs to survive), through a tube fed directly into my major atery in my neck, attached to a double ivac machine. 

I too was continually told of how much money I was costing the hospital for all my treatment.  The cost of the room I was in,  the cost of the bottle of fats and the bag of multivitamins being pumped into me, the endless injections of drugs needed to subside the nausea, none of which worked at all.  I was told that by the time my baby was born, I was going to have cost the hospital a quarter of a million dollars!!!  They actually put a price on my babys head before he was even born.

I too had vomited countless times per day for months.  I used to line up 4 bowls and knew how much each would hold, lost control of my bladder from the wretching, vomiting blood and bile.    I had lost 30 pounds in the first 4 months of pregnancy.  My husband and I actually had to have one of the nurses kicked off the maternity floor for telling me that I was killing my baby as she injected me with the morphine that had been prescribed by my specialist!!!  It played mental mind games with me being so unsure of what was happening to my body and my baby. 

The most important element of this experience which needs to be addressed is the need for more awareness on this being a DISEASE which none of these women  including myself brought upon themselves.   

My dear husband of 23 years, was by my side.  He actually taped this show for me and we both sat and wept as we relived this horrible time in our lives.   We had to turn it off at first because it was too hard for us to watch all at once.

I can honestly say, reading some of the messages on this site are almost unbearable for me but in a different way.  You have no idea how hard it has been to hold all this inside for 20 years and to finally hear thanks to Dr. Phil that I was and am not alone. 

I am willing to talk to everyone and anyone about this topic.  As everyone before me has said, this disease has to come to the forefront and be discussed in order to help future women and their spouses through this tragic time in their lives because it is ,was and still lives in my memory as being the most torturous event in my life and it still haunts me to this day.