I took the four Misoprostal tablets yesterday. I was nervous taking the Mifeprestone because I had read that it "should be taken with caution" with patients suffering from a cardiomyopathy. I had mild arrhythmia but nothing too severe - so when it was time to take the Misoprostal I wasn't too nervous. As soon as the pills had dissolved in my mouth my mouth became itchy. A short while later I started feeling very "strange". Dizzy. Cramps and nausea (I think this is pretty normal). And soon I started feeling shaky, very faint ("weird") and my fingers became tingly. I took my pulse with was 40 beats per minute. I know that my beta-blockers (Atenolol) can give me bradychardia (I'm used to about 44 bpm) - but 40 is really on the low side. I drove in to town where my ex took my heart rate twice - both times it was 33 beats per minute. No wonder I was feeling so terrible! My pulse was very weak and irregular.
Ex took me off to emergency room.
They took my vitals, which all appeared normal. My heart rate was 66 beats per minute.
The sister did an ECG, first of which was 120 beats per minute. There was a lead loose so she chucked that one away and did another. Second one also showed about 66 beats per minute. There were irregularities in my heart beat, but the doctor said that it looked the same as my ECG from five years ago (which would have been when I was feeling as sh*tty for me to have gone into ER) so seeing as it was the same as before, I'm "fine". The crap thing about having ARVC / ARVD is that they don't always catch your arrhythmia's on the ECG. My heart was doing flick flacks in my chest. I told the doctor that I was really not feeling well, so she took my pulse manually, and said "yes, should could feel irregularities, but that is is "normal" for someone with a cardiomyopathy. It is not f*cking normal for me to be sitting in arrhythmia for 5 hours straight (up until that stage - carried on much longer). You think I am imagining that the Misoprostal is making me sick??
I doubt it. I know my body. And I know how to take my pulse.
I heard the doctors conferring and they decided that it was the "trauma of the miscarriage" which was making me feel "funny". Come on. I hadn't freaked out with the previous pills. I'd also not experienced any bleeding from either of the lots of pills. The "trauma" had been over the last week whilst the baby was coming out naturally.
I went home that evening and stayed with the ex. I was freezing. Was wrapped up in two blankets, long top, dressing gown and was shaking and had goosebumps. Coincidental? This is not in my head!
Today, I am feeling a whole lot better. I am so thankful. What a nightmare. It is so damn scary. Like I said before - sometimes you really want to die.. but dying*.. is no fun at all.
*Yes, I am being melodramatic here. Feeling like you are going to die.
MISOPROSTAL:
Precautions
Caution should be employed when administering Misoprostol to patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease.
Causal relationship unknown
I am going to add in from this section what I experienced in case there is anyone else in a similar situation to me.
The following adverse events were infrequently
reported. Causal relationships between Misoprostol Tablets and these
events have not been established but cannot be excluded:
Skin: rash, dermatitis, alopecia, pallor, breast pain.
Special senses: abnormal taste, abnormal vision, conjunctivitis, deafness, tinnitus, earache.
Respiratory: upper respiratory tract infection, bronchitis, bronchospasm, dyspnea, pneumonia, epistaxis.
Cardiovascular: chest pain, edema, diaphoresis, hypotension, hypertension, arrhythmia, phlebitis, increased cardiac enzymes, syncope (near), myocardial infarction (some fatal), thromboembolic events (e.g., pulmonary embolism, arterial thrombosis, and CVA).
Gastrointestinal: GI bleeding, GI inflammation/infection, rectal disorder, abnormal hepatobiliary function, gingivitis, reflux, dysphagia, amylase increase.
Hypersensitivity: anaphylactic reaction
Metabolic: glycosuria, gout, increased nitrogen, increased alkaline phosphatase.
Genitourinary: polyuria, dysuria, hematuria, urinary tract infection.
Nervous system/Psychiatric: anxiety, change in appetite, depression, drowsiness, dizziness, thirst, impotence, loss of libido, sweating increase, neuropathy, neurosis, confusion.
Musculoskeletal: arthralgia, myalgia, muscle cramps, stiffness, back pain.
Blood/Coagulation: anemia, abnormal differential, thrombocytopenia, purpura, ESR increased.
From other resources:
More common
- Abdominal or stomach pain (mild)
- diarrhea
- Bleeding from vagina
- constipation
- cramps in lower abdomen or stomach area
- gas
- headache
- heartburn, indigestion, or acid stomach
- nausea and/or vomiting
- Abdominal pain
- convulsions (seizures)
- diarrhea
- drowsiness
- fast or pounding heartbeat
- fever
- low blood pressure
- slow heartbeat
- tremor
- troubled breathing
I can only say, use this drug with caution!
A quick Google search on "Misoprostal & Cardiomyopathy" brought up the following:
Italian Woman Dies of Heart Attack after Taking Abortion Drugs
By Randall K. O’Bannon, PhD. NRL Director of Education and ResearchYou probably didn’t see anything about in your newspaper or on any of the news networks, but another woman, this time in Italy, has died after taking RU 486, a two-drug regimen–mifepristone which kills the baby, coupled with a prostaglandin, which induces labor.
According to Italian news sources, earlier this month, an unnamed 37 year old woman died from a cardiac arrest at a Turin hospital shortly after taking the prostaglandin.
Doctors, described as “shocked,” said that “everything was regulated” about the abortion and the woman’s visit to the hospital. The Italian news summary that ran in The Local (4/22/14) claimed that she did not suffer from any known illness. The woman first took the RU486 (mifepristone), which shuts down the baby’s life support system, at the Hospital. She then returned two days later to take the prostaglandin, which stimulates powerful uterine contractions to expel the child.
However, according to The Local, four hours after taking the prostaglandin, the woman complained that she was not able to breathe. An electrocardiogram detected an atrial fibrillation, an irregular and rapid heart rate that usually brings with it poor blood flow to the body.
Within mere moments, the woman was dead. She left behind a four year old son.
A few years ago, after a sudden rash of deaths, there was media coverage, government investigations, warning letters sent to doctors and cautions added to the abortion pill label. Yet for all that, no one ever fully explained the connection of the drugs to the women’s deaths.
The media and the investigators moved on. But the women have kept dying.
About half a dozen deaths were known when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a joint conference in 2006. Most of these were due to infections women contracted in the process of their abortions. But there were other deaths due to ruptured undiscovered ectopic pregnancy and hemorrhage.
When the FDA issued a report in April 2011, the number of known deaths had risen to 19.
With this latest death from Italy, add at least one more to the total.
It is interesting to note that Nadine Walkowiak, the first RU486 patient known to lose her life, also died of a heart attack shortly after receiving an injection of sulprostone, a prostaglandin in 1991. Not surprisingly, use of that particular prostaglandin has been largely discontinued, in favor of milder prostaglandins such as misoprostol.
None of the available news stories on this latest death specify which prostaglandin was used, but misoprostol is now commonly used in both the U.S. and Europe. While cardiac events are rare, the FDA label for Cytotec (misoprostol’s brand name in the U.S.) does say, “Caution should be employed when administering Cytotec (misoprostol) to patients with preexisting cardiovascular disease.”
An article from the Journal of Obstetric Anaesthesia and Critical Care, written by a team from New Delhi led by Bikash Ranjan Ray, dealt with a patient in their hospital who while undergoing a caesarean suddenly went into respiratory distress upon the vaginal administration of misoprostol, an unauthorized, but common way the prostaglandin is administered in chemical abortions in the U.S. [1] Doctors conjectured that misoprostol acted on prostaglandin receptors in the lung’s circulatory system, contracting the blood vessels, increasing pressure, and thus inhibiting the ability of the body to oxygenate the blood.
Doctors suspected that administration of misoprostol triggered an underlying but previously unknown peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM), a weakened heart muscle that sometimes shows up in the last few months of pregnancy. Dr. Ray and the team were able to treat and save that woman’s life, but they wrote that “Misoprostol, although safe, may cause pulmonary edema when administered to a patient having compromised cardiac function, hence should be used cautiously.”
More details may become available following the Italian woman’s autopsy. But tragically, it has been made clear, once again, that there continue to be lethal risks associated with these abortifacients, risks that are not always made plain to the general public.
What is clear from this latest tragedy, though, is that these drugs that are used to take the lives of innocent unborn children continue to bring death to many of their mothers as well.
[1] (“Misoprostol induced pulmonary edema in a parturient with postpartum cardiomyopathy,” July-Dec 2011)
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OK, so they have changed up from prostaglandin, but after my experience with Misoprostal, I would use any of these drugs with caution.
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