- A 23-year-old woman with diabetes faced bouts of nausea and vomiting for two years.
- The patient’s symptoms only stopped when she took hot baths.
- Doctors diagnosed her with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome — a side effect of smoking weed.
The 23-year-old woman arrived at the hospital and could not stop vomiting — again.
For almost two years, the young woman had visited the emergency department nearly every month with the same symptoms: nausea, abdominal pain, and throwing up uncontrollably.
Doctors initially thought the patient’s woes were caused by gastroparesis, a condition where the stomach doesn’t empty properly. The digestive disorder commonly affects people with diabetes, which this patient had.
However, previous studies and scans of her digestive system had come back normal, and the medication prescribed to treat gastroparesis wasn’t helping. It was only when the woman mentioned she was a frequent cannabis user that her doctors began to consider a new diagnosis, according to a recently released report in the American Journal of Case Reports.
