I took my BC pill around 2 1/2 hours ago. I just threw up - hard, so I’m pretty sure my stomach is totally emptied out. Should I take another pill? (I have a couple lying around from very rare “oops, forgot” days.)
Need answer … kinda fast-ish. Medical dopers, pharmacists, nurses etc: what say you?
As a general rule, if vomiting occurs more than an hour after a pill is taken by mouth, it can be considered absorbed.
OTOH, there are exceptions . . .
ETA: Not advice, but in a generic sense, I think 2.5 hours has guaranteed absorption.
That doesn’t sound quite right. I took the pill right after a large-ish meal, and a significant volume of my ex-lunch came back up. Are you saying that digestion is somewhat selective i.e. the pill is digested and absorbed before the beef and noodles were?
This is Apri, by the way, if the brand matters. I understand that some formulations are designed to be time-release or whatever, but to my knowlege this one is not.
That’s about how I got pregnant the first time. Were I you, knowing what I know now, I’d use another method of birth control IN ADDITION to your regularly scheduled pills for the rest of this month. That is, don’t take another pill, but do use condoms or contraceptive foam for the rest of this month. Obviously, you’re not going to want to get an IUD implanted or a diaphragm fitted for this (unless you were considering it anyway), but condoms are one hell of a lot cheaper than a baby.
Don’t birth control pills have a series of pills with varying degrees of hormones and/or none at all?
So, a particular course of pills might not be identical. Various days have various am’t of hormones and some none at all, but are there to keep one trained in taking them.
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You need an answer “fastish” as in you can’t take the night off?
Did you get married today, or what?
The placebos are obvious (different color, etc.) and this was one of the “hormone” e.g. non-placebos.
I just looked up the pharmacokinetics on Apri, according to the prescribing information, at steady state, peak concentration of the active ingredients occurs 1.4 hours plus or minus 0.9 hours. That means that the active ingredients, in a worse case, take 2.3 hours to be fully absorbed into your blood stream. Since it was about that long, or longer between administration and vomiting, I think you’ll be perfectly fine. So, no need to take another tablet, or worry for the rest of the month.
Disclaimer: While I am a pharmacist, I am probably not licensed in your state, and besides, I could just be some random person on the internet. So, if you get pregnant, don’t sue me for child support!
Let’s put it this way…if it was a morphine pill in a hospital, I couldn’t give you another until your prescribed 4 hours had passed. It’s assumed to have gotten into your system already.
But if you had vomited within the hour of taking it, or seen it in your vomit, I would have suggested you call your doctor’s office and talk to her nurse. It’s quite possible a woman would be advised to take another and/or follow the following package insert advice for a missed pill, but that would be up to her doctor:
What are the negative effects of taking another pill?
Karl Gauss has a mighty fine reputation here as a medical expert.
Not much, in the grand scheme of things: Nausea. “Wasting” a spare backup pill. Messing with the hormonal status quo, which, for me, always seems to produce breakthrough bleeding.
Of course, on the other hand, none of those negative effects include “made a baby.”
Thanks, all, for the very informative and detailed posts. Since it was just the one (and I promise to take mine today right on time and eat only the most tummy-friendly of foods :D) I think I’ll be OK and I promise not to sue anyone here for child support anyway.
There is a standard of absorption within 45 minutes that is used for OTC pills. Off-brand pills that do not dissolve in the stomach within that time are downrated. That used to be more of a problem. Today the vast majority of pills of all kinds will dissolve quickly.
45 minutes is not a perfect guideline for prescription pills but I would expect them to be within that ballpark. BCPs are small and most do not have coatings that would retard digestion from what I’ve read so the fact that you were retaining food in your stomach at 2 1/2 hours probably is not an indication that the pill was still there.
Interesting subject, as this happened to me before. I had been nauseated, tried to take my BC anyway, and immediately vomited.
There was no pill in the toilet.
I also took a pill last night that was blue. Same thing. How could I miss a fresh blue pill (everything else was yellow bile and some water)? Where are these pills vanishing to?
Let me see if I’m understanding what you wrote: do you mean that the pill dissolves so quickly that it is absorbed (through the stomach lining … ?) before the food - which takes longer due to fats, fiber etc. taking a while to break down - leave the stomach and continues on down the chute?
Other posters have touched on this, but in general yes - most prescription pills can be absorbed through the stomach lining directly. Food in general cannot - the stomach will churn it down and break it down with acid, but nutrients are not absorbed until the food passes through to the upper part of the small intestine. And of course, some of it would never have been absorbed, but would have come out the other end.
Yes. The pill was designed to be quickly absorbed. The food wasn’t. Food takes hours and hours to digest (so says the mayo clinic).
Now, that link gives the time for food to leave the stomach and small intestine. But, if you vomited, would the small intestine be involved?
This link from this old SDMB thread indicates that about 4-5 hours is needed for the meal to leave the stomach completely.
Pills generally need to absorb a hell of a lot faster than that so they can start doing their jobs. Besides, the pill (whatever one it is) isn’t travelling into the small intestine.
In other words, what chrisk said.
Just to pick a nit, some pills are designed to not break down in the stomach, and they do need to reach the more alkaline small intestine to break down. Those are the “enteric coated” ones. They’ll usually come with a warning not to crush or cut them, because if you breach the coating, they *will *dissolve in the stomach, but we don’t want them to (for biochemical reasons that the pharmacists in the thread may deign to tell us.;)) But there are not any birth control pills of that type that I’m aware of.
When I got a prescription for birth control pills, one of the things the doctor emphasized was the importance of taking the pill at the same time everyday so there was a consistent amount of drug in my bloodstream all the time. If the OP threw up a pill, it’s not unreasonable she’d want an answer within a few hours, if she needed to take another one. I’ve also heard anecdotes from other women about getting pregnant because they travelled over several times zones and were taking their pills late according to their body’s clocks.
Hope you are feeling better, purplehorseshoe.
I’m pretty sure the blue is only a thin coating that is easily broken down or dissolved.