u/Crowfooted

About 10 months ago, my husband came down with what we think was a nasty bout of food poisoning. I felt unwell the same night (we ate the same food) but in a very different way - this was the first night I had what I call one of my "episodes".

Generally starts about 5-8 hrs after a meal, starts with general bloating and stomach discomfort. Then I start to feel a bit hot and flushed in the face and I get nausea and these sort of butterfly-like feelings in my gut. Heart rate gets more rapid (and it feels like I can hear my pulse in my head, even when it's slower) and nausea gets worse, dry mouth etc. Feverishness often gets really bad, and I suspect I have been getting low fevers, because when I eventually start to feel better, I sweat buckets.

Within an hour of the onset I start to have frequent trips to the bathroom - need to pee every 20 mins or so for a couple of hours and they aren't insubstantial visits either. It's as if everything I drink goes right through me during this. Bowel movements also become very regular, and maybe softer than normal, but not watery or anything like that, no painful cramping.

Longest episode I had was early in this whole ordeal and it lasted over 48hrs. These days they usually last about 4-6 and never longer than about 12, and symptoms seem milder since I cut out the food I was suspicious of (details later). I can go weeks without an episode, and then suddenly have one, or have several on a few back to back days. They make me miserable - I cant sleep because of how ill I feel, can't focus on anything to keep my mind off it, and end up exhausted and sometimes will have lost weight (which I'm assuming is water weight from the excessive bathroom visits).

Initially I had heard from a friend that I might have developed a food intolerance, so for a few months I kept a diary and eventually we identified a very, very loose correlation with egg. So I cut out egg. The episodes stopped for the most part, I think I went nearly 2 months without an episode, and I felt confident I'd figured out the cause.

That was until last month, when I suddenly got 3 back to back episodes, and another seems to be flaring up tonight. I haven't eaten egg, and going back through my food diary I can't identify any other trigger. The only thing left that makes sense is that it's not just 1 trigger but many. It's not slipped my notice that this all started with what could have been an exposure to some pretty nasty foodborne pathogens.

Is there anyone here who can confirm their experience of symptoms matches what I'm having, and if so, do you have recommendations or reassurances about how I should bring this up to my doctor? He's already aware of the symptoms but we've so far not really got anywhere useful. Are there specific tests I should prompt him for? Im so exhausted and I just need this to be solved.

Thank you in advance