When Bringing Life Has a Risk of Death; An HG Survival Story Part 1

I am going to share with you a personal story, so please bare with.

Those that are close to my family may know the story of my daughter’s journey into this world. It was six months after my husband and I were married, when we conceived our daughter. It was pretty obvious right off the bat that I was pregnant, even though this was our first child. I remember the day that my father came to visit, and my husband was cooking breakfast for us. I was only about 2 weeks pregnant at the time, when the scent of eggs hit my nose and I had to loose what was in my stomach. Very normal for pregnancies, having the morning sickness; or so we thought at the time.

For the first month, our appointments (as my husband came with me to the majority of them) we were told that everything was normal, everything would settle down soon and to just take some B12 (which is the active ingredient in diclectin that is given to pregnant women to combat nausea). But we knew something was not right, because as the days went on, my lease on food got shorter and shorter. It wasn’t until I collapsed from mal-nutrition and dehydration (mind you I was still struggling to eat), and taken to a hospital in southern Ontario, that we started to get some answers. The doctor, to be frank, was a condescending, useless twat, who told me that I was being ‘overly dramatic’. I had told my husband to stay at home, as the hospital was over 35 minutes away. . It was the head nurse that actually
bothered with talking with finding out what was really going on.

I had hyperemesis gravidarum (HG), and it was a bad case. For those that do not know what HG is, the medical definition of it is:

“Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is a severe form of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It is generally described as unrelenting, excessive pregnancy-related nausea and/or vomiting that prevents adequate intake of food and fluids. If severe and/or inadequately treated, it is typically associated with:

 loss of greater than 5% of pre-pregnancy body weight (usually over 10%)
 dehydration and production of ketones
 nutritional deficiencies
 metabolic imbalances
 difficulty with daily activities

HG usually extends beyond the first trimester and may resolve by 21 weeks; however, it can last the entire pregnancy in less than half of these women. Complications of vomiting (e.g. gastric ulcers, esophageal bleeding, malnutrition, etc.) may also contribute to and worsen ongoing nausea.”

-Information taken from www.helpher.org

So, in reading this, it doesn’t seem so bad? Right? This is often why women who suffer from HG are dismissed by doctors, or told by many people around them that it is ‘just morning sickness’ or to ‘suck it up’. This is not the case in all cases. I lost 35 lbs in less than a month and a half (22% of my body weight). I couldn’t eat for most of my pregnancy, and I would fight with doctors who told me that my diclectin was all I would need to treat it.

I remember vaguely what happened around that point in our marriage. My husband actually ended up leaving his job due to the fact that he wasn’t sure that when he came home that night from a 14 hour day, if I was still going to be well enough for him to feel alright about leaving me to go again the next day. I remember vomiting stomach bile, and blowing blood vessels in my eye sockets.. As you can tell, not a very pretty picture!

In and out of hospitals, we ended up having to pack up our home for the second time in a year and move to Toronto, Ont, Canada to be close to a specialist, one of the few in the whole country that knew how to handle HG cases. Everywhere I went though, I would still hear 'it's just morning sickness'. That is, until I was told that I needed to seriously consider abortion as my body was not strong enough.

I was four or five months pregnant, when my Doctor gave me the option. And I didn't tell my husband, as I knew what his answer would be. So I made the decision without a second guess, and lived the next several months in fear. I still worked full time, and there was no option for me to stop working, as it would be a very bad plan for our household. On weekends, @mwoodall would help me get to the hospital, and he would have to explain to the doctors once more (as it was usually different ones that didn’t take what I said seriously) what my medical situation was (well most of it, as I didn’t tell him about the suggestion from my specialist).

I was still throwing up many times a day (20-30) but with nutrients given to me via IV, I was able to maintain my body weight at 125. The constant nausea was debilitating, but we were able to finally find something that worked. Great! Amazing, so thankful! The drug? Oral Dissolving Tablets (ODT) Zofran. For anyone who has any experience with this drug, knows how expensive it is, and that it is used for managing nausea in chemo patients*. They also might know the cost of the drug is through the roof, at $50 a pill. Times that by three times a day, for however long it is needed? There was no way we could have afforded the medication that would have allowed my child and I to survive. We searched all our options, and applied with the government for assistance. While they do cover the pill, we were promptly informed that while I was very gravely ill, I was not classified as ‘dying’ so we would not receive the assistance we needed. Thankfully, there was a guardian angel in the sidelines that came through. More on that guardian angel in another post.

So, my options were to kill, or possibly be killed. Bringing forth life went hand in hand with the risk of Death.

*There was later a class action lawsuit against Zofran being prescribed to pregnant women due to sometimes fatal birth defects, thankfully this is not the case for our LilPinner.

Images taken from pexel