Jennifer's HuGStory
My name is Jennifer Johansson. I absolutely cannot believe there are women
out there who have heard about HG, let alone have had it, and I'm shocked
that there is a website devoted to it! I used to think I was a freak, that
my pregnancies were just extremely unusual.
My first experience with Hyperemesis was when I was 6 years old. My mother
was pregnant with my sister, her third child. She had had HG with her two
previous pregnancies as well, but neither of us ever heard the term
Hyperemesis until decades later. I remember my Mom staying in bed during her
entire pregnancy and me having to take care of my 2-year-old sister and my
Mom during the day when I wasn't in school. My sister and I would watch t.v.
or play in the family room, left on our own until our dad came home. I
remember even more vividly her last pregnancy when I was eleven. She stayed
on the couch in her flannel nightgown throughout the whole pregnancy and took
Bendectine to keep the vomiting at bay, though it did nothing for the nausea.
She would say over and over, "I hope none of you girls have pregnancies like
mine when you grow up."
Fast forward to 1994. My husband and I had been married for four months when
I suddenly realized I hadn't gotten my period and was in fact a week late. I
took a test and was surprised to find it was positive! We were a little
thrown because it was so early in our marriage but we were excited. I had
had some problems with endometriosis in my teens and hadn't even been sure if
I were able to conceive. A few days after we found out we were pregnant, the
nausea started. I began taking crackers and tea bags to work, and that
worked for about two days and then mashed potatoes were all I could keep
down. My poor husband even left work one day at 9:00 in the morning to drive
all around town trying to find a restaurant that had mashed potatoes at that
time of the day. Eventually I began vomiting and none of the tricks were
working. I tried it all: ginger ale, seltzer water, saltines, raspberry tea,
chicken broth, sipping water before I sat up, eating dry crackers in bed,
etc. After a week of suffering (and after begging my husband to smother me
with his pillow one awful night) my mother said, "You'd better call your
doctor." We were new to the area so I had just kind of picked the first
doctor I found that worked out of the hospital I wanted. At my first visit,
he noticed I looked rather...uh..."peaked" to use an understatement and he
tested my urine. It was full of ketones and I was badly dehydrated. I was
admitted into the hospital that afternoon.
In the hospital they set up an IV to get me rehydrated saying I would feel
much better once my fluids were up and they kept pushing all kinds of food on
me. Everything they made me eat, I threw up. After three days on IV fluids
I stopped vomiting but was still unable to eat. They sent me home telling me
to eat small frequent meals. Two days later I was back in the hospital,
dehydrated again. Again, they put an IV in, and encouraged me to eat
whatever sounded good. Three days later, my fluids were just about back to
normal when I began vomiting again and somehow managed to get dehydrated
again while on IV fluids! This horrible cycle lasted for a month. Looking
back now I realize how little knowledge my doctors had. They had never seen
a case like mine and didn't know what to do with me. I had managed to do
some research and found that my condition actually had a name--Hyperemesis
Gravidarum. None of my doctors nor any of my nurses had ever heard of it.
Remembering my mother's experience I asked about antiemetic drugs. My
doctors refused saying I would harm my baby. They kept putting my in the
hospital on an IV and sending me home only to get dehydrated and wind up in
the hospital again.
After a whole month of this they decided to try PPN, which is where they
hooked up some kind of formula with about 500 calories in it or so to my IV
to feed me. At the same time they decided to try some drugs. The first,
Tigan(sp) did nothing. The next, Compazine, gave me a horrible allergic
reaction. It made every muscle in my body painfully spasm and contract for
hours until I was physically exhausted and the nurses were afraid I'd pass
out. A family friend suggested I ask about a drug called Phenergan but my
doctors said I wouldn't be able to tolerate it as it only comes in oral and
suppository form.
When I was about 11 weeks pregnant I went to visit my parents. Over that
weekend, I began vomiting uncontrollably again. By this time, I had thrown
up all the bile and saliva my body could make. I would either throw up blood
or just dry heave--I was vomiting every ten minutes. I wound up being
admitted through the emergency room into the hospital near my parents' home,
which was in a different state than where my husband and I lived. I got up
onto the Maternity floor and heard a nurse say, "So, you've got Hyperemesis.
I bet you feel just awful!" Could it be? Did someone actually know what
Hyperemesis was? I was ordered on NPO, nothing by mouth, another thing that
shocked me. In the other hospital I was urged to eat, eat, eat from the
moment I arrived. And here I was forbidden anything by mouth, even ice
chips, until the vomiting had subsided. When I woke the next morning, I saw
a different bag on my IV pole and asked what I was being given and was
floored when the nurse told me the attending doctor had ordered Phenergan to
be given by IV! They hadn't even asked me! They knew what to do and I
didn't have to tell them! It was the first time in almost two months that I
didn't feel sick. I called my sister at home and asked her to sneak a cheese
steak into my room. It was heavenly.
The attending doctor was nothing less than an angel. He had experience
dealing with and treating my condition and wasn't phased by it in the least.
I remember his first words to me, "Good morning. You look like dog s***."
In three days I felt better than I ever had and left the hospital with a
prescription for Phenergan in my hot little hands. I immediately took it to
my doctors and said, "I've been taking this orally for a week. Please fill
this prescription." They reluctantly agreed but every two weeks when the
prescription ran out they would argue with me about taking it again. Once I
was into the 2nd trimester they kept saying, "You shouldn't be feeling this
way still." and I would say, "Yes, but I am. Your my doctor. Help me." I
would have to start throwing up again to prove to them that I still needed
the medication. At one point they even sent a psychiatrist to look at me who
asked all kinds of questions like, "Have you ever been anorexic or bulimic?
Have you ever been treated for depression with medication? What is your
marriage like?" I was so upset and so offended. I also had to go to
countless visits with a gastroenterologist to check my gallbladder, liver,
etc. The GE guy was so disgusted with my drs for sending me to him when it
was obvious to him there was nothing wrong with me other than the HG. He
even gave me the prescription for the Phenergan for the last three months
when my doctors finally refused to renew my prescription any longer.
Phenergan was a life saver but as a sedative, made me really sleepy and
groggy. It also tastes horrible and sometimes I would throw up because of
it. Even on the drug I had to be extremely careful to get enough rest and
not let my stomach get empty or the vomiting would start all over again. In
my seventh month I was able to wean myself off of the medication. My
daughter was born a week past her due date in June of '95 weighing 7 lbs 8
oz. Within hours of delivery I felt great.
I am currently pregnant with my fourth baby. I have had HG with every single
pregnancy. It was not so bad in my second pregnancy, but I still needed the
Phenergan to get me through. I was only hospitalized once for dehydration,
was able to wean off of it by the sixth month and best of all, had moved
closer to my parents and was able to switch to the doctor who had ordered the
Phenergan in my IV in the first place. In my third pregnancy, the HG started
earlier as it had in my first and I was only hospitalized once, but this time
we tried the drug Zofran. It was eerie how well it worked. It took half as
much to work as well as the Phenergan and didn't make me sleepy. But it did
make me horribly constipated and at one point it stopped working for no
reason for about a week and then started to work again.
Now in this fourth pregnancy I am six weeks and back on the Phenergan. This
time I was sick at only three weeks, before I even knew I was pregnant (I
thought I had a stomach bug) and my doctor gave me my prescription at my very
first visit at only four weeks. I have been camped out on the couch for a
week now and am working on getting myself through the next 34 weeks. I'm a
horrible burden to my husband and 5-year-old daughter (the two pregnancies
between her and this one ended in losses) and get awfully bored and
stir-crazy, but it's all worth every minute of it in the end. By now we're
pros at this and we know what we're doing. Our goal with this pregnancy is
to avoid being in the hospital for HG and to keep me from throwing up even
once. We'll see. To anyone suffering from HG, fight for help. If your
doctors won't do anything, switch. There is help out there, you just have to
be the squeaky wheel.
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