Vomit

Nausea and vomiting have been my constant companions. I loathe their excessive diligence. Years ago I would never have imagined getting to the point where vomiting became second nature. More, a relief.

I'm not anorexic or bulimic, nor have I ever been. Instead, I got sick with something no doctor could give a name, let alone a definition or explanation. Treatment wasn't even a consideration. How can you treat what you don't know? Symptoms were alleviated as well as possible but nothing brought answers.

If you've never experienced intense, prolonged nausea and vomiting, there's no way to help you understand that horror. In pregnancy, many women have to deal with something similar, but in the end they are rewarded with a joyful child. I got more vomiting.

Day in, night out there was nausea so severe I couldn’t even sleep, let alone eat or read or work—even after taking anti-nausea medication. I drank water or Gatorade whenever I could, just to stay hydrated, but that didn’t stop the vomiting. Often, I wouldn’t have anything in my stomach other than water, and so that was all that would come up. When the water was gone, it would be dry heaves. Days and weeks and months of it.

We ruled out everything imaginable in every way possible. I was pricked and poked and prodded and pinched till I was ready to scream for the lack of answers.

After three months of vomiting everyday, several times a day, and being prostrate with spirit-crushing nausea, the vomiting ceased. For two months it seemed as though this anomaly had been just that—something bizarre and unexplainable, but soon gone. Hah.

We didn’t have an answer for those past months, but I felt fine, so I didn't complain. I went back to work after months of on-again-off-again medical leave.

Two months went by. The vomiting started again.

I knew how it felt then, and how horrible it was to be hunched over a bowl or bucket or toilet for hours a day. I feared it would be just as awful as the first time, so I started back to the doctor’s office, draining my health, my strength, my will, and my bank account.

Then one night, in tears of frustration and anger, I scoured the internet to find something, anything, to explain what was wrong with me. A random Google search of “weird vomiting disease” linked to a page discussing Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. I'd found it.

Some people go through cycles of vomiting. Most frequently it affects children, who are more prone to frequent bouts of short duration (2–3 days, about a dozen or more times a year). For a time doctors didn’t think adults could have it, but now they’re realizing that some go through episodes of longer duration but less frequency (up to three weeks, three or four times a year).

No one knows why. There is no cure. There isn’t even a common therapy or medication or treatment. Some doctors don’t even know it exists.

Even more strange, it is sometimes linked to abdominal migraines, which is how my doctor began treating it. Prevent the migraines, prevent the vomiting. After another month, the vomiting stopped. The intense nausea stopped shortly after, and even minor nausea lost its potency.

After six months with sometimes mild nausea but without any vomiting, I decided to quit taking the migraine medication. If I could live without the interminable need for medication, I'd gladly take it. And so commenced a week from heck. Not hell, not this time. Migraines and nausea, but not nearly anything severe enough to equate to the purgatory I'd already passed through.

Why do I tell this story? Because I gained strength and courage from vomit. I lost so many things in the months I couldn't work or eat or sleep. (Except weight. A cruel twist of fate put my body into starvation mode so I couldn't lose some of the excess pounds I carried.) Those losses showed that I could live with so little in the way of money and expensive food and clothes, and objects in general. I didn't need them.

Nor did I need the things Americans generally consider indispensable: big house, fancy car, high-paying 9–5 job, 401(k). Not having those things didn't make my life miserable. Illness did that. If I could survive and be relatively happy in a situation like that . . . well, I could survive anything. Taking risks and the possibility of failure didn't seem nearly as daunting as they had before.

Nausea spared me a lifetime of unexpressed longing. If the illness weren't quite so horrible, I might say I was grateful for it. But let's not get carried away.