Any ideas on sudden vomiting, diarrhea, fainting?

[Amelia_S]

Hi folks. I went through a few years of having these 'spells,' for lack of a better word, and no one I talked to had ever heard of such a thing. I haven't had one for quite a while now but it's always kind of stuck in my head so I thought I'd ask the internet about it. Heads up: this is gross and embarrassing. And long, since I want to give as much detail as I can.

In case it has any bearing, I'm 37, female, white, 5'6", 125#. I don't have any health conditions and don't take medications. I don't smoke or use drugs.

All this started in 2004 and the last episode was maybe in 2012-ish.

OK, when the problem started I was working 3rd shift at a hotel. One night I was sitting at my desk, feeling just fine, and within a space of about 10-20 seconds, I got very faint and dizzy, nauseous, and had that unmistakable churning "I'm going to poop my pants!" feeling. I broke out in a major sweat and felt cold all over and my vision started closing into a tunnel.

I sort of fell out of my chair and crawled to the bathroom and proceeded to have epic diarrhea while barfing my brains out into a trash bag and teetering on the edge of fainting. This was not my finest hour and it went on for maybe around 10 minutes or so. Even after there was nothing left, I kept retching unproductively for a while.

When I could stand up safely, I was still feeling very faint and dizzy and was now weak and shaky from all the violent purging. When I saw myself in the mirror I was really pale and chalky and had big gray rings around my eyes. I looked scary.

I called my backup and went home but didn't get sick any more, just felt wiped out.

I was fine the next day. But then, exactly a week later, the same thing happened again. It happened for maybe 6 weeks or so, always on the same day (Tuesday) and always at night.

The duration of the episodes - from initial explosion of symptoms to cessation of purging and fainting - ranged from around 30 minutes to 3 hours. One of the strange things - I thought - was that I would often continue fainting on and off even if I was laying on the floor. And it didn't matter if I'd eaten anything recently; my body would still try to purge.

I took a Tuesday off and camped out at Urgent Care so a doctor could see me when it happened, but it didn't end up happening that night. I saw a doctor anyway who smirked at me and declared, "Well you're obviously pregnant!" Obviously not! Anyway, he made me take pregnancy test and when it was negative, he said he couldn't help me and sent me on my way.

After that bunch of weekly episodes, they started to space out: every other week for a while, then maybe once a month, then less frequently, etc. But it always happened at night and never with any warning whatsoever. All the symptoms would crash together simultaneously and I'd get pale and clammy, faint or come close to doing so, and have simultaneous intense vomiting and diarrhea.

It continued across jobs and apartments, too, so it's not like I was being affected by something in the air at work or at home.

I was never able to find any cause it possible correlation (like something I ate, etc).

It hasn't happened for a few years now, but had anyone ever heard of something like this? I can't be the only one in the world. I look forward to any responses! Thanks, guys!

[JohnnyRocket244]

There is a condition called MALS (Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome) that sounds very much like the symptoms you're describing.

[TheLightSeeker]

Hi Amelia_S
Have you ever heard of Acetaldehyde?
It's a  by-product of alcohol breakdown in the body and about 30x more toxic than alcohol itself!
Your thinking: "  I was NOT drinking every tuesday at work"!
Well you don't need alcohol intake, since our own bodies,
through gut fermentation, produce alcohol .
Now I know very little about you, but if at the time of these episodes, you may have had factors like stress, high carb diet, underlying low grade infection, genetic predisposition or other, it would at least in theory explain your body's inability
to clear the Acetaldehyde ( due to low  ALDH2 enzyme production which is the agent responsible for Acetaldehyde clearing).
The cyclical nature of these events are remarkable as they likely get expressed as" the rain barrel effect"
when the ALDH net accumulation, reaches a certain
threshold.
Conventional medical science, is behind times on this, but all your cells have a memory of such episodes
and  certain similar circumstances- ie place, time activity-
can be triggers
Now, in the event my theory is correct, you are in a way lucky, you do not have a homozygous gene mutation
(meaning your inherited two copies of  mutated relevant  genes from your biological  parents, which  would bring you to a very high risk category!
Cheers,
Niko