Turns out the Mad Tea Party and Pirates of the Caribbean are a little wilder than you thought: All that ride-induced glee can make you hurl.
At least that’s what happened to an 11-year-old English girl, according to Caters News Agency. Little Mia Gleeson threw up 50 times a day on a trip to Disneyland Paris, due to a rare disease in which uncontrollable vomiting can be triggered by seemingly unrelated factors — such as excitement.
Mom Sarah Gleeson thought she had planned out the perfect surprise trip for her little girl and the kid’s twin brother, Michael. The family met up with Sarah’s sister-in-law, Tina, at a London train station. Tina was holding a Disneyland poster as a clue. Hurrah! And hrrreccch!
“You could see the excitement on their faces, but we hadn’t even got off the Eurostar [train] when Mia started vomiting,” Sarah told the news agency.
Curiouser and curiouser: After Mia went on a roller coaster, she threw up again. And again. And many more times after that.
The child was too weak to go see the Disney princesses attraction. (You know, the one that ordinarily makes only the feminist moms puke.) Nor, apparently, was the kid exposed to the George Clooney movie “Tomorrowland.”
It turned out Mia was suffering from a condition called cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS). Really, it’s a thing — even the Mayo Clinic says so.
“Treatment generally involves managing symptoms and lifestyle changes to help prevent the events that can trigger vomiting episodes,” says the clinic’s Web site. Doctors are a bit clueless on what to do about CVS — except provide anti-nausea medicine — and were thrown off by Mia’s having had an operation to treat a congenital heart condition, which they initially thought might be the cause of the vomiting.
It turned out that elation was the culprit. Said Mia’s mother, “I realized after that holiday that Mia’s vomiting episodes would be triggered by excitement. There was always a pattern that she would become really ill in anticipation of her birthday as well.”
But times are better for Mia now. A gastroenterologist prescribed a medicine called Dioralyte to keep her hydration level up, and her vomiting episodes have been cut back.
“Mia is a pretty tough cookie despite everything she has had to endure over the years,” Sarah told Caters.