Dirt block seems to be 'mined', becomes invisible, when walked into suffocates you

After showing the animation for removing the dirt an 'air' block appears at the place of the dirt block as per usual. However, when I walk into the space my character starts glitching(moving rapidly back and forth by an inch or so) and after a couple of seconds starts taking suffocating damage. The block can then be removed. However, if I attempt to remove the block before I glitch myself into it, nothing happens, just as if it's an air block. This bug occurred while removing a large amount(around 60 blocks or so) with a Efficiency 4 Diamond Shovel, which makes the removal very very fast and I presume the speed of removal is why the bug occurs. It happened twice in a row performing the same action in different spots and does not seem to happen with other materials/tools.