#ive discovered meditating helps for anxiety but only when i know whats causing it

[dimonds456]

i need to be put on anxiety meds.

[alltimebestbooks]

Best 5 Self Help Books

1. Overcome Social anxiety and Shyness

A Books on Prescription Title

Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness is a self-help manual for this common problem, which explains why it happens and sets out practical methods of resolving it.

Don't let shyness ruin your life

Everyone feels foolish, embarrassed, judged or criticised at times, but this becomes a problem when it undermines your confidence and prevents you from doing what you want to do. At its most extreme, shyness can be crippling but it is easily treated using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Using real-life examples, Professor Gillian Butler sets out a practical, easy-to-use self-help course which will be invaluable for those suffering from all degrees of social anxiety.

Indispensable for those affected by shyness and social anxiety

Excellent resource for therapists, psychologists and doctors

Contains a complete self-help program and work sheets

2. Emotional Intelligents

In the book the author, Daniel Goleman, argues that Emotional Intelligence of people was more important than their IQ in order for them to have productive lives. People who were well adjusted emotionally were more likely to have better leadership skills, mental health and job performance. According to Goleman superior EI (Emotional Intelligence) was twice as necessary as skills and IQ required for completing a job. The skill could be taught in schools to enable the students to turn into stable employees and leaders in the future. The author also listed the methods EI could be integrated into the school curriculum. This theory of Goleman's has come under severe criticism as it has been contended that Emotional Intelligence is not really an Intelligence, but just a set of behavioural traits.

However the reader may look at the theory, the book had a great impact. The book was on the New York Times Bestseller list for over a year and a half.

3. Everything Happen For a Reason

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi

“Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

4. Game Changers

The bestselling author of Head Strong and The Bulletproof Diet answers the question, “How can I kick more ass at life?” by culling the wisdom of world-class thought leaders, maverick scientists, and disruptive entrepreneurs to provide proven techniques for becoming happier, healthier, and smarter.

When Dave Asprey started his Bulletproof Radio podcast more than five years ago, he sought out influencers in an array of disciplines, from biochemists toiling in unknown laboratories to business leaders changing the world to mediation masters discovering inner peace. His guests were some of the top performing humans in the world, people who had changed their areas of study or even pioneered entirely new fields. Dave wanted to know: What did they have in common? What mattered most to them? What made them so successful—and what made them tick? At the end of each interview, Dave asked the same question: “What are your top three recommendations for people who want to perform better at being human?”

After performing a statistical analysis of the answers, he found that the wisdom gleaned from these highly successful people could be distilled into three main objectives: finding ways to become smarter, faster, and happier. Game Changers is the culmination of Dave’s years-long immersion in these conversations, offering 46 science-backed, high performance “laws” that are a virtual playbook for how to get better at life.

With anecdotes from game changers like Dr. Daniel Amen, Gabby Bernstein, Dr. David Perlmutter, Arianna Huffington, Esther Perel, and Tim Ferris as well as examples from Dave’s own life, Game Changers offers readers practical advice they can put into action to reap immediate rewards. From taming fear and anxiety to making better decisions, establishing high-performance habits, and practicing gratitude and mindfulness, Dave brings together the wisdom of today’s game-changers to help everyone kick more ass at life.

5. Unstoppable: A 90-Day Plan to Biohack Your Mind and Body for Success

Unlock Your Potential. Become Unstoppable.

Unable to overcome debilitating fatigue and depression, bestselling author and personal devel-opment expert Ben Angel set out on a 90-day mission to find and conquer the root of his rut.

The result of his journey is Unstoppable, a highly revealing book where Ben gives you a look into the world of nootropics, wearable devices, and nutrition and delivers a guide to help you reduce stress, increase focus, improve physical performance, and eliminate your fears. You’ll hear from world-leading biohackers, neuroscientists, doctors, and New York Times bestselling author Dave Asprey as Ben helps you:

Identify the seven triggers causing your brain fog

Discover the key to better health, more energy, and a better mood

Optimize your mental performance and feel more alert with six nootropics

Form new behaviors and break old patterns (the real secret to your success)

Interrupt your stress response through breathing

Align your biochemistry with your soul’s purpose in three easy steps

Use progressive overload to become an upgraded version of yourself

Plus, gain access to the Unstoppable Assessment to discover your identity type, pinpoint your energy levels, and create a plan to break through your own limits and become unstoppable.

When we look at the most successful people, we usually look at their habits—their behaviors, their day-to-day rituals, their dedication. But what about the mind? Ben Angel hits this idea head-on in Unstoppable, tackling peak performance with biohacking strategies that will blow your mind. —Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and New York Times bestselling author

[joegannonfreebird]

Apparently surviving a stroke that took half my eyesight and almost killed me would turn out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. Before I get into how all that transpired, I need to give a little background on how it got to that point.

Growing up, my parents took the same approach to life that most people growing up in the United States could relate to. Their plan for my three younger siblings and me was simple: Go to school and get good grades so you can go to a good college. Then get a good job and make a lot of money so you can have nice things and then you’ll be happy. This was the mantra that I, like many other kids in the U.S., grew up with; the American Dream. I followed the guidelines and my years of hard work finally paid off when I landed a job working for a Fortune 500 company in Rockefeller Center, Manhattan.

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a professional businessman. I wanted to wear nice suits, work in an office with breathtaking views of the Manhattan skyline, dine in fancy restaurants, and date women outside of my Long Island gene pool. Each of these I had achieved more and more year after year as I slowly clawed my way up the corporate ladder. One job change, a couple moves from Long Island to Queens then the Upper West side of Manhattan, a few raises and promotions after almost a decade in the corporate finance realm, and I finally got to the point where I felt like I had “made it.”

However, when I got to that point I still wasn’t completely satisfied. In fact, I only wanted more. Then I saw an opportunity to move further up in the ranks when my director informed me that she would be leaving the company. This was the opportunity I was waiting for! I asked for and received more responsibility along with a sizeable increase to my salary. This eventually transpired into a “be careful what you wish for” situation. In the coming months I felt the responsibilities and workload piling up with no relief in sight. So began the silent war within myself that would lead to the event that shattered all that I had built for myself my entire life.

I worked longer and harder than I ever had in order to prove myself. In doing so, my life became completely imbalanced with the scale always weighted toward work. Over the next six months my stress and anxiety levels were higher than ever trying to keep up with my new workload, as the company had not yet found a suitable replacement to fill the empty role in the finance department. My mind began to turn against me and I felt as if I were stuck in the trenches of my work-related stress even when I left the office. Luckily at this point I was about to go on vacation with my girlfriend at the time to visit her parents, who had retired to a small village in Mexico. It was my first time visiting the country and I was delighted by the relaxed and care-free attitude of the locals and blown away by the beautiful beaches and nature that I immersed myself in. This was the vacation I needed! But all good things must come to an end, so on New Year’s Day 2014, we were dropped off at the airport to head back to New York City, or so we thought.

At the airline service counter, I was handed my boarding pass to return home. In that exact moment, I felt a sharp pain on my left temple like I had never experienced before in my life. I shut my eyes, grabbed my head, and let out a grunt. When I opened them, half my vision was gone and everything was blurry. Something was very wrong. I let my girlfriend know what was happening and that I was pretty sure I was having a stroke. I told her to get an ambulance immediately. I lay down where I was, drank some water, and began vomiting as my body convulsed on the floor of the airport. As the paramedics arrived, I began to feel a tingling sensation run throughout the right side of my body and I was starting to lose control of basic motor functions and consciousness. It was in this moment that for the first time in my life I thought to myself, “I might die.” I’ve been afraid before, but nothing could compare to the feeling I had on the floor of the airport on New Year’s Day 2014. The paramedics hooked me up to an IV and took me to the nearest hospital, which was luckily just down the road from the airport.

I was fortunate to survive with only having partial vision loss and no nerve damage. It was only when returning to New York would I realize the cause of my brain injury. The doctors at Cornell discovered a hole (PFO) inside my heart, which caused the blood clot in my brain. Not too longer after diagnosis, I was on the operating table in Columbia Hospital to remedy the situation. I never thought I’d be having heart surgery in my early thirties. My, how life is full of surprises!

Readjusting to city life after a stroke and heart surgery was by no means easy. At first, it was really bad. I had trouble physically getting around the crowded streets of New York City with only half my eyesight. My personality had changed drastically, as I had become more solemn. My relationships with my girlfriend, family, friends, and co-workers had all shifted to some awkward place that I was unfamiliar with, each in their own way. Invoking intimacy was not what it used to be, as my sex drive was stuck in first gear. I was nowhere near as fun and positive as I used to be when hanging out with friends and family. I had difficulty focusing so my performance at work suffered a great deal as well. My weekly therapy sessions proved to help temporarily, but my mind would constantly return to dark places. After a year of living this new life as a man I was no longer familiar with and didn’t even want to be around, the thoughts of leaving the planet began to cross my mind for the first time ever. That really scared me, so I did something I promised myself I would never do: go on medication.

I went on antidepressants and was also given Xanax that I was instructed to take only when my anxiety levels become unbearable. After just a few days, I levelled out. My depression was gone and my anxiety was non-existent. There was just one little problem: I didn’t really feel anything. Everything was just “fine.” If something good happened, my emotional response was “That’s fine.” Something bad happened? Also fine. At first I was so glad to have rid myself of crippling depression and anxiety that I was satisfied with living as a flesh-covered robot. That lasted only a couple of months. After a while I saw that I was rapidly dismantling into a highly functioning soulless drone. Was this better than living as the strung-out anxiety-ridden person I was before? Were there no other options for me to choose for continuing on with my life?

After picking up my prescription pills for the third month in a row, I hit the gym and when I got home later that evening, I realized they had slipped out of a hole in the bottom of my gym bag. I took this as a sign and decided to try going off of my meds cold-turkey. I fought through the withdrawals following the first few days then started to feel really human again. At this point in time, it was a little over a year after I survived the stroke and it became abundantly clear that I had a choice between pushing on with the usual day to day or maintaining my sanity. I chose my sanity. It was early 2015 when I officially decided I would quit my job to travel and figure things out somewhere else in the world. I immediately began downsizing my life. Most of my possessions were sold, donated, given away, or put in storage. With each item that left my possession, I felt physically and emotionally lighter, as if I were dropping off weights I had been carrying on my shoulders for years. That’s when I began the journey that would change my life forever.

In the summer of 2015 I bought an RV and my girlfriend, dog, and I decided to leave the corporate world behind and start anew in Mexico. After three months, a ten thousand mile road trip, and just over a month living together in the foreign country, it became apparent to us that our relationship of over three years was not going to work any longer. After it sunk in that everything we were planning for the future fell apart, I was completely lost. At least when I was in New York I had the comfort and stability of my job, family, friends, home country, and a language I was fluent in. Now I fell into yet another dark place, but not for long! I was determined to make the best of my situation, so I grabbed a backpack and began solo travelling for the first time in my life!

In the first month, I was just winging it and hopping on buses to the next stop on the backpacker trail of mid-western Mexico. This was a great experience where I met tons of friendly locals, expats, and travellers from all over the world. For the next phase of my travels, I decided to do a bit more planning. I was still hurting from my break-up and needed some physical, mental, and spiritual healing. So the next phase of my trip included an Ayahuasca ceremony in the Pueblo Mágico of Tepoztlán. My experience with Ayahuasca was very introspective and I kept receiving the same message over and over again: “You are on the right path.”

Next was a ten-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in Coatepec, Veracruz, another Pueblo Mágico. This was one of the most difficult yet profoundly enlightening experiences I’ve ever gone through. Ten days of being silent and meditating for eleven hours a day really helped silence my mind and take control of my thoughts and actions.

The last stop in my second walkabout was a month-long work exchange stay at a holistic healing retreat center called The Sanctuary in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Here it took just a few days at for me to realize that the Ayahuasca was right. I was on the right path! I learned new meditation techniques, was doing yoga every day, got a crash course on preparing meals for a high-raw vegan lifestyle, and shared the community house with extraordinary people from all walks of life. We worked, chanted, communed in nighttime ceremonies, shared our most intimate thoughts and feelings, and even cried together. This was exactly what I needed! Not too long after arriving, I ended up joining the team as general manager and The Sanctuary became my home for the next six months. During that time, I helped guide dozens of people through that chapter of their life’s journey, an experience I’ll never forget! It was here where I learned that truly spiritual people are those who have been through hell and have the overwhelming desire to help others out of their own versions of it.

After The Sanctuary, I was presented with the ultimate traveler moneymaking opportunity: trimming marijuana in Northern California, so I took it. I spent the next two months hunched over a table as a pot hairdresser. Once again, it was the people I was surrounded by that made the experience a memorable one. Nothing helps the time fly like sharing stories, listening to our favorite music, and laughing together around the fireplace at night when our fingers needed to rest.

With California in my rear-view, I made a stop in New York to visit friends and family before heading to Puerto Rico. This was the home of a girl I fell in love with during my time in Mexico. The connection we forged during our short time together was different than any other in my entire life. It was based on a love and respect for who the other person was at their core as opposed to who we wanted them to be. Though the relationship would not continue after my visit, she without a doubt raised the bar in my ongoing search for a partner in life.

Once again I was leaving a piece of my heart behind and continued on with my travel journey! I flew into Cancún and worked my way slowly back to the beach city that helped heal my heart better than any other: Puerto Escondido. This trip was more about the journey than the destination for sure. In the Yucatan peninsula I witnessed and scaled massive ancient Mayan pyramids. While in Tulum I participated in a beautiful and emotional peyote ceremony where I took an even deeper look into the inner workings of my mind. In Palenque, I became one with nature after consuming the local magical mushrooms and bathing in the jungle’s mystical waterfalls near the ruins. As usual, sharing these experiences with travel mates amplified my experience. At this point I was a certified travel junky and never wanted it to end! Good thing I was going to nest in a beach paradise and backpacking hotspot.

Back in Puerto Escondido, I stayed in a Vivo Escondido Hostel for a month until I found a long-term rental. You guessed it… more awesome people!

I ended up at a gorgeous newly-constructed two-story house where I would spend the next six months pursuing passions that I had been neglecting for years. I learned to surf, explored the local natural beauty, focused on healthy living, caught up on my travel blog, wrote a few articles, DJed at multiple venues, and made sure to enjoy every day as best I could. Mexico gave me the opportunity to let me live my life the way I wanted to for a while without any judgment, and for that I am forever grateful.

Just a few months ago, I took a two and a half week visa-run/vacation to Guatemala to visit my friend Luke Maguire Armstrong in San Marcos. He and I met while I was managing the Sanctuary in Puerto Escondido the year before and ever since becoming friends, I grew ever more curious of his work with a school for impoverished children in Antigua, Guatemala. I spent my first two weeks immersing myself in the raw beauty of the active volcano communities surrounding Lake Atitlán where he lived. Here I would partake in yoga, cacao ceremonies, ecstatic dance at the Yoga Forest, and even Bhakti singing at The Fungi Academy. All activities of course were shared with new and exciting traveller friends of various nationalities. For the finale of my stay, I even booked myself a DJ gig at Bar Sublime, a quick ten-minute boat ride across the lake to San Pedro.

After bidding farewell to my new friends I met on the lake, Luke and I headed to Antigua to visit the Integral Heart Foundation’s school. Though I had been helping remotely with fundraising efforts for months before visiting, actually meeting the children I was helping made it much more personal for me. It was incredibly heartwarming to actually see the children in person, knowing the adverse environment they had come from not too long ago. None of them were going to school and many were forced to rummage through garbage dumps for pennies a day due to difficult circumstances. No wonder these were the happiest school kids I had ever met in my life!

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A couple days later, I said goodbye to Luke and the kids to return to Puerto Escondido. However, when I got back a shift happened within me and I slipped into another depression. I began to question what I really wanted and needed in my life. I missed my friends and family back home and my funds were starting to run low. After a month of self-reflection, I decided it was time to return to New York.

So now I have come full circle… kind of. Over the course of a little more than two years I have had more adventures and experienced more of what this incredible world has to offer than most people do their entire lives. It’s comical for me to look back at all that happened, remember living in my own personal hell for so long, and to see how far I’ve come since those times of intense despair. It was like a mental quicksand; the more I struggled, the deeper I would sink into it. Of all the lessons I’ve learned, my greatest one is probably this: My mind can be my worst enemy or greatest ally. In the end, I am the one who gets to choose which one it will be. I had to journey into the unknown and experience life firsthand to personally integrate this lesson myself. My experiences and the hundreds of connections I made along the way were what really saved my life. Without them, I don’t even want to begin to think about where I would be right now. I still have no vision on my right peripheral, but I can once again see a beautiful future for myself, something I had lost immediately following the stroke.

In over two years of traveling I have had many revelations, but none more important than this: At the very core of my being, I am a traveler. It is one of the few things in life that makes me feel truly alive. By traveling, I saw for myself that so much of what I thought I knew about foreign cultures was wrong until I experienced them firsthand.

Meeting people from all corners of the Earth gave me a new perspective on life. I realized that although we may have been born thousands of miles away, were raised in completely different cultures, and in many instances didn’t speak the same native tongue, none of us were that different from each other. In fact, many of us were on our own personal quests searching for a deeper meaning in life.

Living and working in New York City for a decade had put me in contact with people from all over the world. This, however, was completely different from my experiences traveling, as most Manhattanites had found their way and were usually more focused on their careers than soul-searching. In my personal experiences with the people I’ve encountered, those who travel are seekers, searching for something that was missing in their lives back home. For me, I was missing a greater purpose, something that my fundraising efforts with the Integral Heart Family in Guatemala fulfills.

The best part of my story called life thus far is that it is nowhere close to being complete. I still have many more chapters to write, thousands of new characters to meet, and countless adventures to experience. In over two years of travel, the greatest gifts I have received were the connections I have made with my soul tribe from all corners of the Earth. I left New York to heal myself and find a higher purpose and I feel that I have accomplished these goals. In my experience living over thirty-four years on this planet, I have found no greater healer than creating deep and meaningful connections with other souls. This lesson I promised myself to follow through with and spread to as many other people as possible. What better place to continue this journey than New York!

This article was featured on Collective Evolution on Dec 21, 2017: CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO ARTICLE

I Was Living The “American Dream” Then Had A Stroke At Age 30 & It Turned My Life Around (Collective Evolution Article) Apparently surviving a stroke that took half my eyesight and almost killed me would turn out to be one of the greatest blessings of my life.

[endorsereviews]

Hyperemesis Gravidarum: When Morning Sickness Becomes Life Threatening

Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is a rare disorder characterized by severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It is a complex physiological disease that I suffered through not once, but twice, and I still have the emotional battle scars to show for it.

MY FIRST PREGNANCY

About two weeks into my pregnancy, I started to feel nauseous. Soon, I was unable to eat almost anything except for maybe a popsicle and some oatmeal without milk. Then the vomiting started. I asked my doctor for help and he basically told me I was overreacting and that I should “suck it up.” As if it were all in my head. Having never been pregnant before, I assumed this is what morning sickness was like for some women.

I tried crackers, ginger chews, seasickness wristbands — the cheap ones as well as the $100 ones — pregnancy lollipops to fight nausea, papaya juice… you name it, I tried it. Despite my fear of needles, I tried acupuncture, then acupressure, and even hypnotherapy. But nothing eased my nausea and vomiting.

A friend said, “But don’t you feel so much better after you’ve vomited?” I didn’t. This wasn’t the flu or food poisoning. This nausea never went away.

As my symptoms worsened, my gynecologist diagnosed me with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. She started to watch me like a hawk and had me come into her office on a weekly basis. Throughout my pregnancy, she assured me that my baby was fine — the hormones that were making me sick were actually helping the baby thrive. The sicker I was, the healthier my baby was. Reassuring as this was, I just kept getting sicker and sicker and found it increasingly hard just to function. I lost 16 pounds in my first trimester. I was 5’ 6” and 98 lbs. Downy “fur” started to grow on my legs. My ketones indicated that I was dehydrated and starving. That’s when my doctor put me on Reglan. This medicine, an anti-emetic, was given to me through a pump infusion in my leg. The location of the IV needed to be moved every three days because the site would become swollen, red and itchy. Before long, my legs were covered with welts. Even with the medicine, it was difficult to eat. I had a home nurse come to the house every week to check my ketones, my blood, and my medicine.

“Do you even want this baby?” — From the (male) electrician helping with our baby room

Before I got pregnant, I had a plan. I was going to eat only super-healthy, organic foods. I would exercise daily with pregnancy tapes. Instead, I found myself able to eat only oatmeal, Jell-O, popsicles and one particular Jamba Juice shake. I was forbidden from exercising because my doctor didn’t want me burning calories. I was concerned that I was unable to eat healthy food. My doctor assured me that she had teenage patients who subsisted on macaroni and cheese and Diet Coke and their babies turned out fine. She told me, “Your baby will get the nutrients he needs, even if he has to take it from your bones.” 

All through pregnancy, I had heightened, overwhelming anxiety that caused me to have hallucinations that I was surrounded by spirits protecting me. I remember lying on the couch, so sick that I was unable to even watch TV or listen to it. I would lie there for hours and then look at the clock and see that only one minute had passed. I bought meditation tapes in an attempt to calm my mind, but I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Later, months after my baby was born, I discovered that one of the side effects of Reglan is profound anxiety. Once the Reglan was out of my system, the anxiety went away.

Smells were the worst. I smelled things that no one else could smell.

I could smell pheromones wafting off of other people. I couldn’t stand the smell of my own husband and it had nothing to do with hygiene. I could smell if a product was expired. I couldn’t use toothpaste because of the smell and taste. I had to switch to fragrance-free shampoo and conditioner, which still had an odor to me — I think I was smelling the ingredients. I would joke that I had developed a “dog’s nose.”

I resorted to wearing nose plugs, the kind swimmers wear, in an attempt to block the many smells that bombarded me wherever I went. When I went to my ob/gyn appointments wearing my nose plugs, others in the waiting room would stare at me. I’m sure I looked like a freak. At home, I tried walking around holding a lemon under my nose (I’d read somewhere that that worked) but it didn’t help. I wore a nose plug at all times, even to Jamba Juice. 

Well-meaning friends would ask me, “What would happen if you tried to eat something you think you can’t eat?” It would come up, that’s what would happen. And the vomiting was so violent (and often bloody) that when I puked, I would pee my pants (or worse). Soon, when I vomited, I would need to have my head in the sink while sitting on the toilet at the same time.

MY SECOND PREGNANCY

Although I had vowed to never be pregnant again, I felt like our family was incomplete. We could not afford a gestational carrier, which would’ve been ideal — my own fertilized egg carried by someone else. But then my doctor told me there was a new medicine that would help me: Zofran, which dissolves on the tongue. No more anxiety-causing Reglan and itchy welts on my legs.

Well-meaning friends said things like, “It’ll be different this time because your body knows what it’s doing.”

Well, this time was worse. I don’t know if it’s because I was having a girl and there was more estrogen in my body, but I started to get sick very early on. And I had a toddler to take care of. I was working on an animated TV show, but soon I was too sick to go in to story sessions and had to quit.

This time, I couldn’t eat oatmeal or popsicles or Jell-O. I couldn’t keep down prenatal vitamins. I could barely swallow my own spit. The Zofran which dissolves on the tongue tasted TERRIBLE! And it didn’t work! I was brought to the hospital to have a PICC line (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) positioned in a large vein in my chest, just above my heart. This would allow me to receive 24- hour IV tube-feeding, or TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), which bypasses the gastrointestinal tract when a person cannot eat or drink.

Because it was all I could do to just function, my parents, who lived across the country, flew out to help care for my son. While my husband was picking them up from the airport, I woke up to a pool of blood coming out of my arm. I was terrified. I called 911 and the operator was rude to me. He told me to “calm down” and was not sympathetic at all. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics grabbed my son from his crib and put him in the back of the ambulance with me. He loved vehicles, so I tried to hide my fear and make it seem like we were going on an exciting adventure.

When we arrived at the hospital, I looked out the back of the ambulance and saw my ob/gyn walking by. What a stroke of luck! I had the paramedics call her over. She took my son with her to her office where the staff would look after him while my PICC line, which had been put in wrong, was fixed.

Throughout this pregnancy, I walked around with an IV pole or a specially-designed backpack in which I could carry my IV along with me. Because I was not consuming any food or liquid, I stopped having bowel movements. I was constantly starving. Nutrients were being pumped into my veins, but not my stomach, which grumbled and ached for food. I liked food, I just couldn’t eat it. Without the meds and the IV nutrition, I’m sure I would’ve died, and my baby would have, too. My home nurse brought me boxes of Saltines, Nilla Wafers and bland crackers. This made me angry. I didn’t have “typical” nausea. I wasn’t being stubborn and I didn’t have an eating disorder — I just COULD NOT EAT.

When my parents and my husband ate dinner downstairs or brewed coffee, I would vomit. They never turned on a stove or microwave. They learned to eat cold foods that didn’t emit smells the same way and stopped making coffee in the house. But I could still smell their food and would violently vomit every time they ate.

“I’m so sick of you women complaining all the time! You need to stop being so weak! Men would never complain the way you women do.” — From the chiropractor who yelled at me after I told him I felt nauseous.

The second time around, I wasn’t a skinny twig. In preparation for nausea, I had intentionally put on weight before I got pregnant. But I didn’t lose that weight at all because the TPN was filling my body with over 2,000 calories a day of liquid. I sloshed around with my big belly and quickly outgrew the maternity clothes from my first pregnancy.

Every day, I needed to inject my TPN bag with various meds and vitamins. It was complicated. It wasn’t until months later that I discovered that I hadn’t been preparing the tubing properly; I wasn’t getting the air out of the tube before connecting it to the TPN. If an air bubble had gotten trapped in my tubing and gone into my blood stream that could’ve been the end of me.

Because I wasn’t supposed to get the PICC line site wet, I needed help bathing. My husband would often help me. One time my mother was helping me when the Saran Wrap I’d used to wrap around my tubing (to protect it from water) got tangled. I asked her to help me cut it off. I don’t know if I moved or if she was nervous and panicked, but she accidentally cut my tubing and blood started spurting out. Thankfully, my home nurse was on her way, so no harm was done, though my mom and I were quite shaken from this incident.

Many times during my pregnancy, I would ask my doctor, “Am I going to die?” She would look me in the eye and say, “Would I let you die?” Which wasn’t really an answer.

My nurse told me about another patient who was hospitalized for her hyperemesis. I felt sorry for her — she must have it so much worse than me. The nurse said no, I had a more severe case, but I had a better support system at home. My nurse also told me stories of women who did not have comprehensive insurance so they went without good care or medicine (at the time, Zofran was $50 a pill) and now their internal organs were permanently and irreversibly damaged. 

This was a scary time for me, but it helped to keep things in perspective. While I was struggling with my pregnancy, my husband’s brother was also walking around with a tube sticking out of his arm because he was in the end stages of cancer. We would sit around commiserate about our PICC lines. Being with him made me realize that as horrible as I felt, while he was dying, I was creating a life.

WHAT HELPED

Throughout both pregnancies, a lifeline for me was the HER Foundation (Hyperemesis Education & Research), which I was lucky enough to discover online. Women who had been through hyperemetic pregnancies were there to talk to me, assure me, and listen to me. They offered support, kindness and never judgment. They gave me hope and helped me believe that I could stick it out. The co-founder of HER, Kimber MacGibbon, was calm and compassionate. I knew if she had been able to get through it, I could, too.

WHAT I LEARNED

I had to learn to forgive myself for not eating all the healthy food I had intended on eating during my pregnancy and just do the best I could do. Late in my second pregnancy, I suddenly felt like I could eat something. And that something was mac and cheese. I told my husband and he dropped everything and went out and got it. My sister said, “Why would you want to eat something so greasy? Why not something bland?” But again, my nausea was caused by hormones, not sickness, so bland food wasn’t the answer. Soon I was able to eat fruit, which I craved. I also craved dairy, perhaps in response to my body getting ready to lactate. I always craved dairy when I was nursing — I even dreamed of drinking milk shakes. But food did not taste the way it should. Chocolate didn’t taste right, but I kept trying it, hoping it would again someday. I could not eat fish, chicken or salad. Lettuce was like eating metal.

TODAY

When I was at my sickest, my sister would remind me, “Remember, you get a prize in the end!” And it’s true. I have two great kids. My son is 15 and my daughter will be 12 in a few weeks. And although they were worth what I went through, I still feel traumatized by my pregnancies. I suppose I will always have a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I still smell odors that no one else does, particularly pheromones… but at least chocolate tastes good again.

THE TAKE-AWAY

I am an incredibly strong person to survive Hyperemesis Gravidarum. My doctor told me about patients of hers who had terminated wanted pregnancies because their HG was just too unbearable. The fact that I came through HG not once, but twice, is something I remind myself whenever I face a challenge in life. If I could get through those pregnancies, I can get through anything.

Have you or someone you know experienced Hyperemesis?

Hyperemesis Gravidarum: When Morning Sickness Becomes Life Threatening posted first on your-t1-blog-url