BayAreaPhoenix

:praying

ctrom40

Sleepygoat,

Honey, you are in my thoughts and prayers.
I was one of those MOMS that encouraged you about helping your daughter at the hospital.

You mentioned that she has AIDS, and her inability to receive adequate medical care. I am not in the medical field, but persistent diarrhea and vomiting sounds pretty serious to me.

In my sometime not so humble opinion I think that you did what a good person would do. You helped her receive medical attention, and you acted as her advocate. You did not drive her to get her next score.

Very supportive and gentle hugs,
Colleen

bookmiser

(((((((SleepGoat))))))))

hello-kitty

Sorry if you feel ***ed off. I hope you can get your focus off your daughter's vomitting and diahrea and on to yourself and your survival. It must be very stressful to try to help someone take care of themselves when the really aren't willing to address the serious & deadly issues of using heroin and crack. Take care.

marle

It is often hard for me with my daughter to understand her priorities. She has severe asthma which at one time was under control with medication. She no longer uses the medication that prevents the attacks. She does have an inhaler which she abuses. But she continues to snort heroin and smoke crack and is around cigarette smoke 24/7. She also had lazy eye when she was younger and through patching and surgery and corrective lenses, her vision was saved. She no longer wears contacts because she does not visit an eye doctor and so does not have prescriptions for her contacts. When she was younger we also spent a lot of money getting her teeth sealants so that she would not get cavities. She has not seen a dentist in almost two years. I am only saying all of this because all of it is not important anymore because the worst damage that my daughter is doing to herself is coming from her own choices to put the drugs into her body which is causing lung, brain, liver, kidney and other organ damage. I could provide her with asthma medication, contacts and dental care, but until she is willing to find recovery and quit the drugs what good would that do. Addiction is progressive and both of our daughters are going to continue to deteriorate no matter what we do for them because their primary focus in life is to get high. Their drugs will kill them someday. Their health is not important to them. Offering your daughter a ride to the hospital to possibly find the cause of her illness is not wrong. You are doing what you need to do as a mother. But you have done that and now it is the responsibility of your daughter to decide if she wants to get and stay well. This illness may not be caused by her drugs, but it most probably is not getting better because of the damage that she has already done to herself. It is so hard to watch them making such damaging choices. I hope that you find a way to step away for a while and focus on yourself and your recovery. Until your daughter is willing to help herself, things will just continue to be more of the same. Hugs, Marle

SoberAndy

Of course, you should bring your daughter to the ER when she's sick. That isn't enabling. That's supporting.

I'm sorry you feel ****ed off, but you did come here to ask what we thought.

Maybe your daughter simply had a stomach virus. I hope so. But some of your statements set off some serious alarm bells. The idea that she can do "maintenance", that is, time her use so she won't get sick but no more, is an illusion.

I try to stick to relaying our own experience. My step-daughter had been sick a lot from using heroin. She got to the point where she could no longer do maintenance. She felt good for ten minutes and awful the rest of the day. She had a lot of diarrhea and constipation.

Opiates have a very serious intestinal affect. When I was a kid in the '60s, my mom used to give us paregoric. which contained a very small amount of morphine for diarrhea. If a tiny amount of it can control diarrhea, imagine what a huge amount of it can do and what it's like when you withdraw from it.

During her last relapse, she used for a week. When she went into rehab, she was sick for nearly a week from withdrawal.

Again, maybe your daughter had the stomach flu, but there is a very good chance this was drug related.