I’m abruptly awaken, almost as if by the ring of a bell or blare of a siren. However, there is no such noise. It is silent and still dark outside, leaving that blanket of calm and quiet still settled over everything. The sharp contrast is jarring to a mind not yet fully awake. The feeling lingers in my mind and an uneasiness stirs as I sit up and crawl out of bed. The more I wake up, the more off-kilter my mind feels.
Every time I inhale I feel uncomfortable, as if on the verge of having a brain freeze. After just a couple of minutes, I can’t deter the sensation and I start to feel intense nausea. Sometimes I notice a pain or a throbbing just below my belly button, directly in the center of my abdomen. After a few minutes more of struggling, I begin wondering if perhaps letting myself go will give me relief, and the while thing will be done.
Then it begins. Anything that was in my stomach quickly exits. At this moment I rarely make it to the restroom, more often to the hallway or to the kitchen trash bin. But wherever I am, I’m bent over, barely awake, vomiting as hard as my body will allow. I can feel the muscles in my stomach clenching, every muscle in my legs quivering, and the back of my throat is in a competition with my chest over who can clench the tightest. A layer of sweat quickly forms as I keep heaving and have only small blips of bright green bile pouring from my mouth with each sudden sharp clench. Suddenly the pain in my head clears, and I feel ok for a couple of seconds, maybe a minute. And maybe, this is where it ends and it wasn’t an episode. Maybe this time, it was food poisoning or the onset of the flu.
No.
The sweat that was soothing me milliseconds ago, now feels ice cold and all I can do is shiver as I frantically try to wipe it off of me before it freezes to the point of burning and making me feel ill. The pain from the cold and the weird feeling when I breathe in makes me feel uneasy again, and though I try to comfort myself with positive thoughts, slow breathing, and small sips of water, nothing works. I try slowing and counting my breath, but each inhale feels freezing cold and sharp. Slowing it down isn’t helping, if anything the fact that it isn’t causing any comfort makes it feel like torture and I abandon them for short fast ones. Seemingly the easiest, but I quickly feel exhausted from that technique and revert back to trying slow and steady. Before I can be completely out of breath I feel my stomach clenching and a wave of nausea flies over me, seemingly worse than the wave before, encompassing me and I’m back to trying to conjure up good thoughts, or just counting or just something to distract me and to provide some relief. It’s suddenly there and feels like it had always been. This time, I’m over the sink retching, reaching out for support, winded instantly by the amount of pain my abdomen is in. This time there is no food, no water. I’m gagging and nothing is coming up, except for tiny dollops of bile.
I quickly gather up a bag or trash bin and a couple of towels. If I can grab a glass of ice water with a straw then I do. Back into the bathroom to sit on the toilet, unsure what my body wants to do to relieve the feeling of pressure and pain. I bury my face in the towel, breathing in slow and trying to again, count numbers, or do basic math, something neutral to distract myself of my body and the situation I’m in. If the light was on I try to turn it off. Keeping stimulus to a minimal and controlling it is all I can do to find some sense of relief. The taste from everything is impossible to get out of my mouth. If I can control myself I try to use a toothbrush or just some water to reduce the astringency. If that works without setting off more clenching and dry heaving, I might try to drink water. If the taste of the toothpaste isn’t oddly sweet and instantly nauseating, I might try to clean my mouth out. If I can crawl to the bed instead of being in the bathroom, then I will. And take a barf bucket with me.
Now, I know better. In the beginning, if I could get to this point I would start to chug water. The desire and desperate feeling to drink cold water would be all I could think about. This would often be a bad idea. I’d usually feel the pain in my stomach and the cycle would start over. After a couple of years, I knew from enough Emergency Room visits to just chew ice, if that, and try to avoid sucking water in, avoid super cold water, and avoid doing it over and over. It would be hard to control. There would be episodes where I would get a couple hours through and feel like I was almost on the other side, only to break and chug water or chew ice and for the whole mess to start all over again.
And it has been like this for over a decade. Some years are better than others. Some episodes are easier to control than others. Oddly enough, positive situations seemed to cause a lot more episodes than negative stress. A couple of years ago, the pattern of noticing episodes before my menstrual cycle ended up changing my birth control method, which helped reduce my episodes greatly. This past year I have had very few actual episodes, most being weird half-episodes that start later in the day or that I manage to get it under control within a couple of hours. Some of this I attribute to the covid-19 pandemic and the sudden transition to being indoors, working from in front of a computer more than anything, and not encountering much.
That being said, even though the cyclical vomiting has reduced, I still have moments of feeling rather odd, and a sudden wave of nausea will hit. I’m currently working with medical professionals to figure things out and to continue to keep things under control. I hope this description might help someone going through a similar medical experience. Mine started after a rather stressful event in my late teens and has been difficult to find the triggers or to manage. I urge others to not simply think it might be stress or digestive tract-related, as it seems to be hormonal and nerve-related in my case.