Hyperemesis  Gravidarum by Erin Kennedy

I became violently ill approximately ten months ago, for no apparent  reason. I was in a constant state of pain, severe enough to merit several trips to the emergency room for treatment. I was also vomiting approximately five times per day, no matter what medicine I was taking or for that matter, what medicine I chose not to take.

At the fourth visit to the local emergency room I was lying in bed with my head planted halfway into a wastebasket when a nurse walked in and hit me with the big news. "I know why you are so sick" she said "You’re pregnant."

This was news to me, and to my husband as well, since we had taken many pregnancy tests, all of which had come back negative until that day.

 We went home, again on many medications to help with the vomiting. I struggled until my twentieth week of pregnancy, when I became so ill that I was put in the hospital for two weeks. They treated me with morphine, 150mg a day, enough to knock out four grown men. For the nausea, I was also on Phenergan, Reglan,  and Zofran.. The vomiting continued, and I lost so much weight that no one could tell if I was pregnant or not. Luckily, the body is amazing and the growing boy in my belly was thriving, even though I was not.

At my fifteenth day in the hospital I decided to fake my way out. In many ways I thought I was going to go home and die in the arms of my husband. I had become so weak and frail that I was unable to move without help. I could no longer go to the bathroom on my own and needed help to raise a glass of water to my lips. I had gone from a very strong independent woman to a ghost in twenty weeks.

I succeeded in getting out of the hospital by vomiting only when no one was in the room. They sent me home on a prescription of morphine (oral) Zofran and Phenergan. I had to be carried from room to room because I was too weak to walk on my own.

After much studying and contemplating, my husband and I decided to try marijuana. A close friend of ours who suffered from testicular cancer swore that it was the only thing that saved his life and made him able to eat. I agreed to try it, on the basis that it would be temporary, that I would eat it and not smoke it, so as not to affect the lungs of my growing child, and that if it didn't help with the nausea and the pain, I would go back into the hospital.

My husband dutifully prepared cannabis butter and I began the regimen.

Two days into ingesting the butter I became hungry for the first  time in months. It may seem humorous to some, but the feeling of being hungry was the first sign that I was returning to normal. I ate on my own for the first time in months, and didn't throw up. Not only that, but my abdominal pain (from constant vomiting) was nearly gone, and I had stopped taking the morphine altogether. Marijuana saved my life and the life of my unborn child. Though it is illegal and we are now suffering the repercussions of smoking during pregnancy, I do not regret it at all. My husband and I are both forced to take urinalysis tests three time per week even though I stopped ingesting the marijuana two days before my son was born, and have had clean tests since and my husband is clean.  We still run the risk of losing our newborn child to child protective services. I stand by my statement that marijuana was the one and only treatment that saved my life and my son's as well.