Advocating for your wife

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

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Advocating for your wife

Postby pkremer » Mar 01, 2007 3:03 am

We've been living the nightmare of HG for 5 weeks now. If there's anything I can offer from our experience, it's that you, dad, have to be the advocate. You have to demand better care. Your wife is so sick she can hardly think straight, let alone stand up to a doctor. You can't allow her to be lost in the medical system.

Force your doctor into action. Don't assume that just because your doctor is an experienced OB that he knows any more about HG than you do. Make your doctor become educated. If he won't, find a new OB.

Don't assume that your doctor knows anything about what's going on with you. Despite the growing availibility of electronic charting, the doctor probably didn't check the chart before he called you. He probably doesn't know that his partner gave you 4 liters of fluid when he was off yesterday.

The messages that you leave for your doctor rarely make it to him intact. What you say is filtered by somebody, which is filtered by a nurse, and it eventually ends up at the doctor, then it's filtered back to you. If you suspect your doctor isn't getting the whole picture, fight your way through the blockade that the nurses put up and speak directly to the doctor.

Don't let an inexperienced nurse stick your wife. An HG woman isn't somebody to practice starting an IV on. If it isn't started on the second stick, get somebody else. Find out who the best nurse or phlebotomist in the hospital is and get them to do the stick. If you have an outpatient cancer care center, the nurses there are likely to be good with needles.

Get a referral to a perinatologist, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine. They have likely seen more cases of severe HG and should know or be willing to learn about more aggressive treatment options. We finally saw one and he had all kinds of options for us, far more than the 3 things our OB tried.

Don't be afraid to call your hospital's patient advocate. They have ways of getting things done. If you're afraid of retribution by your OB, get a new one.
pkremer
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Postby Cin » Mar 01, 2007 11:01 am

Keep up the good fight, Patrick. Welcome and :hugs: to you and DW.
Image
Mom to Alex, 12 -- NVP
Isaac, 10 -- NVP
Naomi, 8 -- HG
Edward, 4 -- avoided clinical HG through aggressive pre-emptive treatment and pure luck (aka medicated fluffy)
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