Crying for my Best Friend

A place where partners, fathers, friends, and family members can discuss experiences and difficulties regarding loved ones' Hyperemesis.

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Crying for my Best Friend

Postby jinxy543210 » Oct 13, 2006 8:37 am

I met Ivy almost 2 years ago through work. We have become such good friends that we consider each other the sisters we never had. Ivy and I have a lot in common, but her having HG has completely changed all our lives.

Ivy is now 13 weeks pregnant. She got sick with her first child, but nothing like this time. She is now in the hospital for the second time and I guess I came to this site looking for some answers. I don't think I can express how hard this has been for everyone. She is depressed because she feels no one believes her, and that no one is taking her seriously.

I had a child that died at 6 weeks in 2000. I was 18 at the time. I knew there was something wrong with my baby from day one, but all the DR's just put it down to colic and me not knowing what I was getting myself into. Hardly anyone took me seriously until he was almost at death's door, so in that respect, I can sympathize.

Ivy is facing losing her job, and her FMLA claim was approved, but later denied because her DR didn't document that she was unable to work explicitly. I am so frustrated with her DR that I have told anyone that will listen to to go to this nutjob. Thankfully she is now looking for a new OB.

Ivy just bought a house last year, and now with no paycheck, along with the stress of HG itself, and the prospect of losing her job, she is worried about losing her house as well. She is looking into ways that they might avoid anything drastic happening, but until the nausea lets up, I really don't know what they are going to do. I am so worried for her.

More than anything, I just feel like she is being robbed of so much. She has wanted a girl so much, and now she is pregnant with one, and she can't really even enjoy her pregnancy, and that breaks my heart. She never gets out of the house anymore unless forced to, and as a result she is so depressed. I have kidnapped her and just taken her to my house so she can still relax, but with a change in scenery, but I just don't know what to do anymore.

She and her husband are doing okay. Sometimes it gets hard for him, and at times he has a hard time remembering that he needs to slow down a little more and focus more on her, but overall, he just has no idea what to do for her. None of us do. I catch myself telling her to eat and drink more, but I know it's not her fault. I just get frustrated with the HG, and it ends up spilling over to the people around me.

The first time she went into the hospital, I had not seen her in a couple of weeks, only talked to her on the phone. When I saw her, I will never forget how pale and weak she looked. I have never forgotten that, and I never will. Now she is back in the hospital, and I'm so scared for her. I cried last night because I just don't know what else to do.

I want her to be more excited about the baby, maybe it might make it easier to face all the sickness. I'm going to Target today to get one of those machines you can listen to the baby's heartbeat whenever you want to... that way when she gets down, she can maybe focus on the one good thing coming out of all this... I just hope it helps.

I know this is running long, but I just needed to let this out. Seeing Ivy go through all this, I don't know how you women cope. I know Ivy spends a lot of time on this site reading. I don't think she has ever posted. I just felt the need because at this point I'm running out of ideas...
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Postby justme » Oct 13, 2006 8:48 am

I am glad that she has a friend that is caring about her . . .

Can she get online? It might help her to get support in the forums from those with their own hg pregnancies. If she can't, I know one mother recently got online for her daughter and posted frequently and everyone replied with their love and support and she printed them out for her daughter.

Also, she may look into finding a different ob/gyn. Get info from the protocol section and find a doctor who will really help her. What is she taking? Many hgers have to take a combination of meds - and they help more with the vomiting than with the nausea. Others on the board are more informed about this than I am.

Also, she may need to think about taking an anti-depressant. This can help with the depression.

I hope others will give you good suggestions.

Praying for you and your friend,
Karen
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Postby tgger007 » Oct 13, 2006 8:57 am

jinxy,

first off, you are doing the best thing you can do. Be her friend. I had so many friends that avoided me. That was just as hard as the HG. They did not understand and hid. I understood they were scared, but they left me when I needed them to be strong. That would be my advice for you.. to be strong when your friend needs you. It is not easy to be in either shoes. HG can just be so $#@# frustrating and can rob you of so much joy.

I am also glad you realized that the wanting her to eat is frustrations of the HG... For we all want to be able to eat and drink and be normal. If it was ONLY that simple.

Take care of you and thankfully your friend has someone taking care of her.

*hugs*
Crystalyn

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Postby krdoty » Oct 13, 2006 10:13 am

You are a good friend for sticking by Ivy and looking for info to help her. I second the suggestion for giving Ivy this website to visit if she is able. If not, you can post for her. Finding a different OB is imperative. There is a folder here where you can ask for suggestions for your area. The sooner Ivy gets in with a new OB, the sooner she can get appropriate treatment AND corrected FMLA paperwork to protect her job. Please do post againt to let us know how she's doing.
Kendra, M.W.F.E.
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Postby Chedasha » Oct 21, 2006 9:48 pm

You are doing the best you can by being her support friend. It's a tough role but believe me very vital. Let her know her disease is real and that there are plenty of others with it. When my sister had it I would come to the sites and tell her the stories of others with it and what was going on with them. I think for her knowing it was real, knowing others survived it kept her going. She really couldnt think about her baby as such because the only thing she wanted was it gone so the sickness would go.

Kat
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Postby Xphile_mo » Oct 22, 2006 4:54 pm

I would just like to say that I think you are amazing!!!! :hugs:

NONE of my friends have stuck around and don't really ask how I am now because they feel I should be fab and happy to be pregnant .... and just keep telling me "it'll get better soon!" Even my "best" friend (who is also pregnant) seems to have to make an effort to ask how I am when I see her. She doesn't seem to realise exactly how lucky she is to be a "fluffy bunny" or that I am really jealous of how healthy she and her baby are.
I always get the impression that my friends don't REALLY want to know how I feel when they ask (ie if I bump into them on the way to the doctors) so now I just say I'm fine. Then I come home and log on here!! HG is depressing enough and sucks the life out of you, but when your friends don't understand or don't want to know, there are just no words to describe how awful that in itself makes you feel. :cry:

I've found so much help here, I can't thank anyone enough! If your friend can't get online, or doesn't have the energy, I think it's a great idea that you do it for her - you've obviously got her best interests at heart!!! That alone will mean more and give her strength than you can possibly imagine. :)

I think you deserve "friend of the year" award. Please know how much you are doing just by being there for her!!! I wish we all had a friend like you!! :hugs:
Moira x x x

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Postby mjmama » Oct 22, 2006 5:03 pm

You are being a wonderful friend :D . HG is so hard on everyone :twisted: .

When I was pg with my first I spent two months in the hospital and most of my friends didn't even bother to visit. That was very hard for me :cry: . I would never have been able to get through it if it weren't for my wonderful and supportive dh, mom and MIL. They were with me all the time and took turns to give others breaks so that I wouldn't ever have to be alone. I was so sick I wasn't even talking, I would just grunt :lol: I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was awful. I even had a man, (that I didn't know) that went to my MIL's church, come to visit me. It was a particularly bad day for me and I must have looked like death itself because the poor man just stood in the doorway and cried :shock: It was wonderful when I was feeling better because he came back and we were able to talk. I was so touched by the people who sent me cards and visited and prayed. Just you being there for her thru this will mean everything. It's such a difficult thing for loved ones to go through, I know my poor family felt so helpless. None of us had ever heard of HG or knew anything about it.

Switching o/b's sounds like a great step in the right direction. There is a thread on this site for women looking for o/b's who have dealt with hg. You may want to check and see if there's one where you live. Trying different meds and having the support and understanding of your o/b can make a huge difference.

I know I would have loved to have heard stories of other women who had been thru hg (I didn't find this website until after my second pg). I wanted so bad for at least one person to understand what I was going thru, to truly understand it. So, reading her stories of other women may help, as well as, she herself writing her story (or you for her).

Can she refile her FMLA claim when she gets a dr who know's what they are doing?

:hugs: to you and to Ivy. Let her know that there we here know what she's going thru and I'm praying for her and for you :wink:
Tabitha

Three miracles:
Malachi 9/29/01
Joshua 7/4/03
Lincoln 7/11/07

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Postby jinxy543210 » Oct 23, 2006 5:32 am

I just wanted to take a minute and update all of you on Ivy. She came to my house yesterday and is doing SO much better. The nausea is getting better, and right now she is just trying to get her strength back and heal her body from all the lost fluids and bouts of dehydration. I picked her up some Ketostix so she can monitor from home to make sure she gets enough nutrition and doesn't have too many ketones in her blood.

Her FMLA has been approved up until the 30th, so I think she may come back to work for a while. We have all stressed to her though that she needs to not overdo it.

She also decided not to change OB's. I found one that was really good, but she said she doesn't want to change up doctors this late in the game. I think she is worried about paperwork for FMLA, since it has now been approved I think she just doesn't want to do anything to jeopardize it. I can understand in a way, but I want her to change anyway. Her doctor is a real piece of work, and, as God as my witness, said the most horrible thing to her... I didn't find out about this until recently (prob. b-cause Ivy knew I would say something) but apparently the Dr told Ivy that...

She wasn't so much worried about her not eating enough, because, well, after all women in 3rd world countries don't get enough to eat almost all the time and they deliver babies....

Now, take a minute to let that statement absorb...

I could not believe it when Ivy told me that. Oh my GOD. I am so tempted to gather some statistics like the mortality rate of babies and mothers in third world countries and take it by that doctor's office. Here, in America, where we pay through the nose for good health insurance so we don't have to live like we are in third world countries, this is totally unacceptable. I want to stand outside her office and give women flyers telling them all what she said. I have warned all my friends against seeing this doctor...

By the way, her name is Dr. Epley of Columbus GA. She should not be allowed to be a doctor in my opinion.

That being said, Ivy doesn't want to switch. I think at this point she has just been through so much, and the is the single most non-confrontational person in this world. I'm actually scared to push this particular point with her just because she seems so emotionally fragile. But I really WISH she would change dr's.

Whe Ivy told me what that doctor said, until then I guess it had not really hit me how people must view this condition. And I'm just thinking -well then tell me how you "really" feel then dr- I mean, the fact that this woman actually said this out loud appalls me. But at the end of the day, how may people out there are thinking it but not saying it? And how much of it do they convey without saying it in their daily interaction with all of you?

Somehow though, I just thought that a doctor woyuld know better than to assume... I guess I thought wrong...

I want to take a minute and apologize to all of you for all the snide remarks made not quite behind your back. For all the times you were condescendingly told to eat something, and for all the times you were just told to suck it up, it's only morning sickness after all...
:hgisland:

:hugs: Hugs to all of you.
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Postby Xphile_mo » Oct 23, 2006 6:14 am

Glad to hear Ivy's a bit better now, and the ketostix will definitely help. Athough you will need to push her if she's not v confrontational (or just too emotionally drained) to get treatment. Different doctors and midwives in different areas view the ketostix in completely. Some are pleased you're taking the "positive" approach to dehydration, the others seem to feel you think you know better than them!!

If she gets moderate to large ketones, and the docs don't agree that she needs fluids etc get her to the ER where they'll take her serously. (I am assuming you will need to do this going by the docs' opinions already.)
I was told it "doesn't necessarily mean anything" and that I didn't LOOK dehydrated and was still passing urine, so must be fine!!! This was after I'd been admitted to hospital already, so it really depends on the doc!

Again, you're doing a fab job by suporting her :)
Moira x x x

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Postby mjmama » Oct 23, 2006 12:33 pm

So glad to hear Ivy is doing better :P .

I used the ketostix when I got home from the hospital also and it helps to have a visual of how you are doing. HG can be so draining and I understand her being concerned about the FMLA, but maybe she could just consult with the dr you found and see if it would interfere in anyway with her FMLA. She deserves to have a dr who believes in what she is telling him. It's hard enough having hg but to have a dr that is condiscending and belittling just makes things worse. It is completely unexceptable :twisted:

I'm in Georgia also, just north of Atlanta. I know there are good dr's here who know about HG. Also, I was treated at Northside hospital and they were great. When I was dehydrated I didn't have to wait in the er I was admitted right away to the high risk prenatal unit. That may have had a lot to do with my dr, though. I can't remember where columbus is in relation to atlanta, but if she has to go back to the hospital and you could get her to Northside I know they would treat her well. The nurses there (with a few exceptions) are wonderful and so are the nutritionists who put little snack bags together for me everyday depending on what I thought I could stomach. They were filled with cookies, crackers, dry cereal, jolly ranchers, lemons... whatever. And if I could eat them I would if not it was fine. I was encouraged to try but not pushed or shamed if I couldn't.

I hope Ivy will continue on the upward swing and she doesn't have to go back to the hospital. You are such a wonderful friend to be looking out for her like you are. She is very, very lucky to have you.

Oh, is she on any medication now?
Tabitha

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Malachi 9/29/01
Joshua 7/4/03
Lincoln 7/11/07

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Postby krdoty » Oct 23, 2006 4:47 pm

I'm so glad to hear that Ivy is doing better! I hope that trend continues. Please encourage her to check out the site if she is able. If not, then I hope you'll keep letting us know how she's doing. You really are a good friend.
Kendra, M.W.F.E.
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Postby BrandiJK » Oct 23, 2006 5:30 pm

I am so glad she is feeling a bit better.

I want to stress to you what others have said, you are such a wonderful friend. It is hard, hard, HARD to stick through someones side while they ride the waves of HG (and it's after effects). So many people dizzle away, simply because they don't know what else to do. "What can I do?" they think. "I can't help." They think. But they are wrong. All we want is for someone to take us seriously, to love us through, and listen to us even if we say the same thing day in and day out for the endless 40+ weeks; "I feel sick".

Thank you, on behalf of so many women, for sticking it through.

I am sorry her doc is not supportive enough. I know that statement was taken out of context, and perhaps delivered increadbly, incredably poorly. But I think I get the jist. Really, they need to watch the baby. But the baby normally taken what is needed from the mama's body. Hard on the mama, but good for the baby. That is how so many women in third world countries can deliver. She should have followed up with the mortality rate of the women delivering.

Is she on any medication?
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