Still holding the line. HG has not reared its ugly head again yet, and I am feeling mostly fine. I have occasional surges or periods of mild nausea, but I haven't taken any nausea meds since Saturday morning. Hoping to keep it that way.
This thing has made me realize what a mental mess HG has made of me. This morning I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and thought I detected nausea, with the end result that I ended up getting up and prowling the house for half an hour while having some sort of quiet anxiety attack. I am so emetophobic! Nausea just makes me panic now. It didn't used to be that way, but slight nausea can now send me into a tail-spin of hyperventilating anxiety. I have a sweet friend who ended up in a psych ward when she started her descent into second-time life-threatening HG, and I am so totally with that - it's a surprise to me that things like that aren't more common! Perhaps it's some version of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
In that way, non-first-time HG is indeed worse than the first time. The first time is terrible because one is confused and scared and not knowing what is going on; the subsequent times are terrible because one does know what is going on and what is going to happen.
Other than that, no news. I'll try to check in periodically. Have a great sabbath, everyone!
(Speaking of which, we did have our first family Sunday at our old church this morning, and it was lovely beyond words. Such happiness! I am thrilled to be back.)
So glad you are doing so well. You're quite right, PTSD is very common in HG women (see help her website). I would say our in depth research while being a logical response is also potentially a symptom of that. Here is the website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.helpher.org/hyperemesis-gravidarum/complications/post-traumatic-stress.php
I say you'd be mad if you didn't have a bit of anxiety really. You are doing so well though and you have all your plans in place, just keep applying your theories and findings. You're already doing better and have said so yourself. I was also pretty scared on the first day of proper nausea and sickness and my default setting is a rather obsessive version of being sick is so horrible vs why am I not sick, is that a bad sign? It's like that saying, be careful what you wish for, eh?
Yay! I'm glad you are doing better and I really hope it stays that way. I missed a bunch of important posts while I was gone, apparently - so congratulations, and I'll start praying too, and I can't wait till I go back to church on Sunday and get to see you guys there! I'm so excited that you'll be back :)
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