Q. A while ago when on vacation in Florida I was watching television. I was horrified to discover that my stomach was so enlarged it was like I was nine months pregnant. I quickly took my fluid pill and sat down again.
My mouth then filled with fluid and I threw up. I had to run to the bathroom three times. Each time, I threw up several times. My doctor said my stomach muscle wasn’t working and the fluid had been accumulating for a long time, but I didn’t notice the swelling eight hours earlier.
I am now afraid that I can’t go on bus trips that I so enjoy because I don’t know when it will happen again. Please help.
A. I’m concerned about what this is doing to your emotional frame of mind. The condition might be caused by something that needs close medical attention or it might be nothing of importance, but still your fear will make this problem a bad one for you.
I will provide you with some information that you and others might be able to use to better understand what happened, but you really need to talk with your doctor or a gastroenterologist to figure out what’s going on. Then you can deal directly with your anxiety and fear and get back to those bus trips.
Many things can cause the stomach not to empty its contents. They can be divided into three categories: the stomach muscle isn’t working, the nerves controlling the stomach muscle and valves aren’t working or the outlet from the stomach is blocked.
Think of your stomach as an electric water pump. Water backs up when the pump cylinder is worn out, when the electricity is turned off or when the hose is clamped off.
You need to provide your doctor with more information for this mystery to be solved, but a few things you said are clues to it being in the third category–the outlet from the stomach was blocked off–because it happened only once on vacation and then went away.
There are several causes of blockage of the stomach outlet (called the pylorus). It can be caused by inflammation, often associated with an ulcer, by twisting of the stomach or by blockage by an undigested ball of food. You might have had a bezoar. This bizarre-sounding thing is quite mundane. It is the medical name given to an undigested ball of food that plugs the outlet.
The food and liquid we take in, along with the saliva and stomach acid we produce, can rapidly accumulate in the stomach if nothing can get out. When you vomited so many times, you might have forced the ball of food through the opening or even vomited it.
One of the most common foods that make up a bezoar is the undigested pulp of citrus fruits–which you probably ate a lot of in Florida. To be on the safe side, regardless of the cause of your problem, it would be important to chew all your foods thoroughly and perhaps stop eating citrus fruit pulp.
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Write to Dr. Douma in care of the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
