The sulphur burps have arrived and I have never been less dignified

Started 22 January 2026 · 8 replies · 246 hearts · read 4.4k times

HarriSwansea, UK · 22 January 2026

6 months ago

Rugby knees, Swansea, week nine, and I am here to report on a symptom that no clinic mentioned and no leaflet names properly.

Eggs. Not eating eggs. Producing them. Roughly every ninety seconds, for about six hours, starting on the Sunday evening after my step up. My wife left the room. My dog left the room. I sat in the kitchen with the window open in January feeling like a Victorian curiosity.

Two things about it. One, it is genuinely unpleasant and it came with a churning gut and a night where I did not sleep much. Two, and this is the bit I am struggling with, it is embarrassing in a way that the other side effects were not. I could tell my boss I was queasy. I am not telling anybody at work about this. I nearly did not post it here.

So: is this a known part of the furniture, does it settle, and did anything help? And has anybody else found that the daft symptoms are harder to talk about than the frightening ones? Because I told this room about a fortnight of nausea without blinking and I have rewritten this post three times.

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal

Known part of the furniture, yes, and you have described it accurately enough that several people are going to feel enormously relieved reading this.

Two things worth separating, though. The burps on their own are grim and generally settle. The burps plus a gut that is churning and pain that is building and not passing is a different picture and worth a call rather than a wait — that combination has occasionally turned out to be something that needed looking at. You describe one bad night that resolved, which is the ordinary version.

On your last question: yes. Every circle I hold has this. People will describe frightening pain and hide wind. Dignity is doing a lot of work in the wrong direction.

39me too 8

VivLuton, UK

Reflux was my whole first year so I am well qualified in indignities. Mine came for three days after each step and then stopped entirely once I settled at a dose. Have not had one since last spring.

What helped, and I offer it as a report not a prescription: smaller and drier food on the two days after, no fizzy anything, and not lying down flat for a couple of hours after eating. Propping the head of the bed up on two paperbacks got me through November.

28me too 7

BrodyDunfermline, UK

Plumber. I spend my working life in other people’s bathrooms and under other people’s floors, and I am telling you now, as a professional, that nothing you have produced this week is remarkable.

Mine lasted a fortnight after each of the first two steps and then stopped entirely, and I have had none since Christmas. The van window has been down since October anyway, so my working conditions were unaffected.

Dundee lad I work with had the same and would not say a word about it for weeks. We got there eventually, over a flask, and it turned out he had been sleeping in the spare room over it.

33me too 4

HeddaCopenhagen, DK

Danish directness: you have written four paragraphs apologising for a bodily function. Stop it.

More usefully — mine were worst when I had eaten late and gone to bed within the hour, and best when the day had been dull and early. That pattern was so consistent for me that I stopped eating after about eight o’clock, which I resented and which worked.

31me too 6

AshSunderland, UK

A&E nights, so allow me one professional observation and then I will be quiet: the number of people who arrive having sat at home for two days with something serious because they were too embarrassed to describe it is very high. Higher than the number who come in over nothing.

You posted. That is the skill. Keep it for when it matters.

42me too 9

RufusGuildford, UK

Commuter. Eats on trains. Badly. Mine coincided with the 07:12 from Guildford and I have never been so grateful for a delay announcement, because everyone stood up and moved.

Settled by week twelve for me. It genuinely does become an anecdote.

25me too 3

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

Welsh first language, so forgive me, there is no polite word for this in either of mine.

Mine stopped when I started drinking a great deal more water through the day rather than a pint of it in the evening. Might be coincidence. Two years on, no return.

18me too 2

HarriSwansea, UK

Right. I have read all of this out to my wife, who says the dog is not coming back until March regardless.

Two paperbacks under the bed, dull early dinners, water spread out. And the thing about saving my embarrassment for when it matters — I have written that on a card. Thank you, all of you, genuinely.

30me too 3

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