Reflections on Vomit, Part 1

Last winter I sat in the dentist's chair with my mouth propped open. The sounds of the drill and the music from my MP3 player mingled in my doped up brain. I listened to one song in a continuous loop for 30 or 40 minutes before I realized it was the same song. Bits and pieces of the conversation above my head floated through as I contemplated the events in my mouth. “Preparing” a tooth for a “crown” involves more than a pep talk. The smell of my tooth being methodically drilled away was acrid and pungent. Luckily, three Ativan neutralized the anxiety portion of my brain, so I could consider my fate placidly.

The recovery was misery and once I healed from the first four hour procedure, I still had three more procedures left to do. It hadn't been all that long ago that I had sat with the dentist and reviewed the results of the x-rays. The results were impressive, and not in a “you are going to have all your teeth when you are 84 years old” sort of way. I had 17 cavities and was in need of at least one crown with the possibility of a root canal. He was shocked that I didn't have any pain. I told my mom and she nearly cried over the loss of my healthy teeth. I nearly cried considering that I was looking at $3000 of dental work.

Seventeen cavities makes it seem as if I have very poor hygiene or smoke cigarettes or drink too much pop or something. Something very, very wrong has to happen to get 17 cavities in 6 years.

 Friday, March 14, 2014 marks seven years out of that something very, very wrong. Seven years of out of my tour of duty. Seven years past the battle of my life. It is seven years being past Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG). HG is a severe illness that strikes less than 1% of pregnant women. According to the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation, HG “is a severe form of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It is generally described as unrelenting, excessive pregnancy-related nausea and/or vomiting that prevents adequate intake of food and fluids. If severe and/or inadequately treated, it is typically associated with: loss of greater than 5% of pre-pregnancy body weight (usually over 10%), dehydration and production of ketones, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic imbalances and difficulty with daily activities.” It usually resolves by the second trimester but often lasts the entire nine months.

I think I am ready to write about it. I wrote about it while I was pregnant and then I stopped. After my daughter was born, I didn't want to speak of it, write it, think of it, remember it, know about it. I wanted to have my baby in my arms, drink water, eat what ever I wanted and never, ever vomit again. My little girl is turning seven this week. She is a beautiful, glorious girl. She is smart, sweet, athletic and the spitting image of her dad. We are having a celebration with our friends and her family. She is super excited because she is having a pool party and her best friend will be there. She doesn't understand how much of a celebration this really is.

Not only is this a celebration of her seven years of life, it is a celebration of living through the war that was my pregnancy. It is not just a celebration of creating life, it is a celebration of not dying and not losing my baby. It was a war against my body as it turned against me. Shockingly, horrifically turned against me. Any joy and excitement stripped, replaced with fear, nausea, vomiting, helplessness, grief. It was daily battle to survive and grow a baby. This battle cost me 9 months of my life, $43,000 in debt, my teeth, the ability to eat entire categories of food, future children and a whole host of other things that I probably don't even notice because it has been etched into my self and is no longer identifiable.

My pregnancy seemed normal enough at the beginning. I peed on the stick of home pregnancy test and a plus sign showed up in the “indicator window.” We weren't trying for a baby and I hadn't really expected to see a plus sign. I had been confident in my math skills when figuring out if I needed to use birth control one particular afternoon five weeks previously. Here's a tip, never do math during foreplay, especially if you are bad at math! My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, went into a daze and repeated several times “What do we do now?” He also tripped and cut his foot open on the baby gate we used to corral our dog. We were pretty stunned, but my biological clock had been screaming for the last year, so it was a happy event to see the unexpected plus sign.

To be continued...

Part 2

Part 3
Part 4

Part 5
Part 6