i just wanted to share with you all some interesting info on what i found to be false information in my medical records. i had hg in the spring of 1999. this was my secong pg but 1st hg pg. i always thought that my dr did the best she could at the time but i now know that this is not true. she made my hg seem like no big deal in my medical records. she even neglected to record the 20+ times that keytones were found in my urine. she also recorded that the meds that i tried (phenagren, reglan, tigan) seemed to help. thats just not true! i ended up taking only a few doses and going through the rest of the pg with no medication. she wrote in my charts that because i had some extra pounds on that the weight loss was still acceptable. i am 4'11" and lost 18 lbs.(that is a lot for my stature) i didn't have THAT much extra weight and when i delivered i was very underweight. i did have a midline put in and recieved home health care for fluid 3/day. she wrote that i was doing well with the fluid and nothing could be further from the truth. all was well if you call vomiting 20+ times a day well. the IV fluid made me vomit even more everytime i recieved a bag of fluid. i think that was because it was so late in the game when i started the fluid that my body rejected it no matter how it came into my body. it did keep me alive. it saved my gallbladder but i was in the pits of hell and she wrote that all was well! i had starvation pains in my stomach that was unbearable. i wished i was dead and i wias bar ely alive. i am SO mad that this is how my OB treated me. she wasn't concerned at all about the emotional part of hg at all. i have to say i am SHOCKED!
i didn't know about this site (or the delphi forums site) way back then, i wish i did. i was never told about b6 or zofran. i was left to suffer silently (as most of us are) yet even after discovering this site i still felt like my OB tried her best. it wasn't until i moved and had my medical records sent to my house so i could give them to my new dr. that i realized just how mismanaged my hg pg was. unfortunately i know hg is often mismanaged.
i am not a confrontational person, which is no help when you have hg, since YOU are you best and only advocate. when i'm out to eat, i have my dh ask the waitress for more water for me. i quess i am sort of shy too. it makes asking for anything hard for me. i have found that when it comes to most things in life, if you don't ask you won't get it. i am getting better but even with my 2nd HG pg (3rd pg total) i only asked for zofran and not fluid to help it work when i was dehydrated. i didn't ask for much help from family and friends to care for my 2 kids either. it was still a miserable hg pg.
so my warning here to all of you is to be your own advocate. not just with hg but with every aspect of your medical care. if you need your partner to advocate for you...like i do....you need to tell them to. if you start w/ a dr. you thought would be good but has turned out to not to be what you thought, CHANGE DRS! you are more improtant then what that dr will think.
my wish is that all drs would be more informed about how to treat hg so we could all recieve the care we diserve. the wish for no more hg won't ever happen but the wish for OBs to know how to properly treat hg is something that could really happen one day. it would save so many lives.
i am currenly 5 weeks pg and feeling good still. i am getting ready for the worst. i have already asked my new OB about steroids, fluid, zofran. i am trying best to be proactive and i hope when push comes to shove i can ask agian. i hope all of you find what you need to make it through hg. may hg have mercy on us all.
take care,