On June 29, 2015, I got nauseous. I have been nauseous every day since.
This incessant nausea has been my constant companion for almost two years. Had I a dollar for every morning sickness joke, I would be a billionaire. The times I have had to pull my car over to vomit are countless, as are the times I have had to suddenly stop whatever I was doing and hope I made it to the bathroom in time. Occasionally I am not fast enough.
Cleaning up the contents of my stomach is a skill I have perfected — a skill I had no idea I would need so often. This particular type of vomiting is insatiable. It does not stop with what is in the stomach. It wants whatever is deep inside. Food. Water. Bile. Heaves. Pain. It goes and then goes some more. I drink water quickly so I have something to throw up — it is less painful that way. Some days this happens fifteen to twenty times. It is unpredictable, debilitating, and depressing.
The vomiting is, thankfully, infrequent. But the nausea never leaves. Some days it is extreme, accompanied by sweating and dizziness and an inability to speak. I have to lie down and breathe through it, pacifying my stomach so the spasms do not come. Other days — increasingly, over the last few months — it is manageable. A persistent low-grade discomfort I can live with and still function. I like those days. They do not last.
It is a cycle. Hence the name: Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome.
Initially my doctor thought parasites. So did I — I had seen enough of Monsters Inside Me to know how those things operate. It was not parasites. Tests followed. Blood work, MRIs, ultrasounds, food logs. Everything came back normal. I was grateful not to have parasites, a damaged gallbladder, or celiac disease — and yet something was clearly wrong. I began to fear that doctors would conclude I was making it up. A hypochondriac. Seeking attention. I knew the nausea was real. I knew it was costing me plans, work, relationships, pieces of my life.
The gastroenterologist finally said: Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. My inner monologue responded immediately: He’s making this up. He’s at his wit’s end and can’t come up with a real diagnosis, so he invented one so I’ll go away. Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome isn’t a thing.
It is, in fact, a thing. A real, documented, neurologically-based condition related to migraines. Rare. Poorly understood. Not curable. Sometimes children grow out of it. Sometimes they do not.
I went to the Mayo Clinic anyway. I was not going to give up. These extra-fancy doctors would find the real problem and fix it and I could return to a life without nausea. I was genuinely impressed — two hours with a gastroenterologist who had gone through my entire file with a fine-toothed comb, patient and thorough and kind. He told me gently that he knew I had come hoping for a different answer. The senior physicians agreed with the original diagnosis.
Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome. That was it. That is it.
As the Buddha invited the demon Mara into his house to have tea, I must invite this disease into mine. We are going to be together, perhaps for the rest of my life. I must make my way through the world with it.
And it has been, for all its difficulty, one of the greatest spiritual teachers I have encountered. It has taught me acceptance — a real, embodied acceptance, not the conceptual kind. It has taught me patience with myself and with my body. It has made room for the practices I had studied for years to become not ideals but necessities.
When the nausea is here, it is firmly here. So am I. That means missing things I wanted to experience. It means cancelled plans and sick days and staying home when I would rather not. But that is okay.
I will stay home and have tea with my demon, my guru, my teacher, my disease.
In the end, everything will still be okay.