Reaching out to other HGers

I’ve always been an activist at heart.  If my mom reads this post, she’ll laugh at this and nod her head.  I burned so much energy as a young person with what my parents lovingly (?) called “righteous indignation.”  Getting fired up about something was fun!  I wanted to go out and do something!  Anything!  I wanted to make a difference.

When you don’t have a whole lot of direction (and what teenager does?), it’s hard to channel that energy to really good use.  I mostly spent my time getting fired up, ranting, and then simmering down.  I couldn’t really find that special thing I wanted to “activate” about.  I have an English degree.  I’m allowed to make up words like that.

Frankly, I’m not very good at being an activist.  As my snopes friends will tell you, I can be… well, let’s face it, I can be pretty balls to the wall about stuff, and that’s not always a good thing when you’re trying to influence people to see your point of view.  I sometimes take the barbarian horde approach to diplomacy: conquer, pillage, take heads, worry about the other stuff later.  I’ve got a lot of energy and it’s easy to accidentally let that energy go off course and become a little destructive.

I think I’ve finally found my niche, though, in writing this blog.  Finally, I’ve found something constructive into which to channel my energy.  I feel like I’m actually accomplishing something here!  I’m not just feeding the flames of righteous indignation, I’m actually doing something!

I have gotten so many comments from you readers that tell me that I’m helping them.  I am so glad.  It makes me feel like I’m actually making a difference for people, and not just filling my own need to journal about this illness.

Here’s a real life example:

I’ve been talking to a co-worker, who is really active in The Church, about getting a couple of copies of Beyond Morning Sickness into the hands of one of the big local crisis pregnancy centers.  Let’s face it, HG truly is a crisis in pregnancy!  Yesterday, she came over to my desk and said that, while she hadn’t had the time yet to call her friend who works with one of the big Catholic groups here in town, she did hear about the niece of a friend who is pregnant and really sick and on IVs and in and out of the hospital and is that the same illness that we were talking about?

According to my friend, this woman had bad morning sickness before, but what she’s going through now is a whole new level of awful.  Thankfully, I’ve got a few extra copies of Beyond Morning Sickness and Mama has HG lying around for just these occasions.  Today I was able to give her those books along with a note and my contact info.  I hope it brings her comfort and hope.

It feels so good to be able to give back like this.  I feel like I might actually be helping people.

I hope I really am helping.  I think I am.

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As a brief pregnancy update, nothing is going on.  I’m feeling fine so far.  Fine enough that yesterday I skipped the zofran.  This makes me a little nervous.  At least some kind of symptoms would tell me that there’s something going on in there.  I’m not asking for HG, mind you, but a little something to let me know all is well would be nice.

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As a further upate, that previous update was written yesterday afternoon.  Dude, I do not wake up at 5 so that I can post at 6 AM!  Ha!  Anyway, I got punished for not taking the zofran.  I had a definite bout of nausea last night at around 8 PM.  So let that be a lesson to me:  Don’t skip the zofran.