After three weeks of nothing to eat or drink,
you feel skeletal. Your husband forces you to
go to the doctor. The car trip seems
unbearable, but somehow he gets you
there, stopping many times for the
relentless vomiting. The doctor looks at your
grey face, your lips cracked and bleeding
with dehydration, your dried out tongue
stuck to the inside of your mouth, your
weight loss of nine kilos in three weeks. He
admits you immediately into hospital.
It takes the hospital staff seven attempts to
insert an IV into veins which are so
dehydrated they keep collapsing. Then they
leave you, attached to life-giving nutrients
and fluids. The nausea and vomiting
continue, but after a few days, you feel as
though you may not die after all. They will
not let you leave the ward until you can
drink by yourself and keep it down; this still
seems impossible. Small sips of room
temperature water, flat lemonade, ginger
beer, even sucking on ice cubes – you try
everything the nurses suggest but it still
causes vomiting.
Continued on page 5
The doctor decides to administer IV antinausea medication. It finally provides a
window of relief, and for the first time in
weeks, you manage small sips of apple
juice. You are allowed to go home with an
oral version of the anti-nausea medication.
Doctors and midwives assure you
repeatedly that it is safe for your baby, that
the malnutrition and dehydration is far
worse for both of you.
However, the oral version proves ineffective
and you are back lying on the Emergency
Room floor, vomiting. You are only eight
weeks pregnant. You do not yet realise that
this condition can last all pregnancy. You’ve
started to lose the will to survive. There is
no end in sight.
The doctors are calling this Hyperemesis
Gravidarum. It is not morning sickness – it’s
a different kettle of fish altogether where
your life stops, you’re bedridden, and you
cannot achieve something as simple as a sip
of water. You read later in researching HG
that English novelist Charlotte Bronte died
of the condition in 1855.
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