I fainted once in my whole entire life. Maybe twice.
I was maybe in the second grade and my grandmother woke me up to go to school. She took one look at me and asked if I was sure I wanted to go to school. Now, I did not feel well at all but school was my favorite place to be-- all my friends were there-- and i HATED missing school. So I insisted I was fine, staggered to the bathroom, put the eyehook lock on the door and thought to myself-- Wow! I don’t think I’m gonna be able to keep myself. . … I remember beginning to fall and then. . . my grandmother frantically banging on the bathroom door, trying to knock it down while she yelled my name over and over. I also remember not wanting to move because the bathroom floor tiles were so nice and cool and I was so, so hot.
The second time I was on a field trip to a park. Some one called my name, I turned my head. . . and the next thing I knew, I was on all fours with a large crowd around me. Apparently I had wandered too close to the swings and someone called to warn me, when I turned my head and got clocked on the back of my skull by a very, very apologetic schoolmate. Everyone was concerned about my knee, even the teachers but all I could think about was my pounding head. Until they sat me down and I got a look at the gash on my knee that had poured out so much blood my gym sock was turning red. THEN my knee started hurting.
Those are my two fainting stories, although I’m not sure the second one counts.
I’ve fainted quite a few times in my life, perhaps dozens of times. I tend to get faint in very hot weather, especially if I stand for a while. I also get faint if I am kneeling or crouching but then stand up too suddenly. I am pretty well practiced at how to cope, so I know how to fall or collapse safely in a safe position and just wait 10-20 seconds for it to pass. There was one time, though, at the age of 13, when I fell straight backwards/downwards in the middle of basketball practice and hit my skull hard on the concrete pavement. I was lucky to have no serious injury from it.
One time I gave blood and I just wasn’t prepared enough (hadn’t eaten, hadn’t drank enough, I don’t remember) and I passed out. I had already donated and was getting my snacks and felt woozy then I woke up on the ground with someone putting cold compresses on my head and stomach. All good - I’m sure they deal with that all day!
I almost passed out another time from over heating and/or dehydration but I went and laid down on a cool floor as soon as the stars showed up.
Once when I was young and sick and stood up quickly, then saw stars and then realized I was looking at the ceiling from the floor.
Another time I got a bunch of vaccinations at once for a trip to Africa, and the last one hurt a lot. I was sitting on the table and said to the nurse that I felt a little light-headed, and she closed the distance between us very quickly to lay me down on the exam table before I totally lost the power to remain upright. Good job, vaccination nurse.
I would put that under the heading of getting knocked out, which is different from fainting, IMHO?
Back in high school, my friends and I would induce fainting for fun by hyperventilating and standing up quickly and holding our breath while bearing down (something like that, kids don’t try this at home!) The experience of coming to was interesting in that it was like rebooting the brain. I remember coming to and looking around and being unable to retrieve the words for what I was looking at. A brief moment later it all came back to me. But for that short moment I thought, “Interesting, I’ve broken my brain. I wonder if I’ll come back?”
I fainted twice. Both in the same day. Many years ago I had had surgery on my back to remove a cyst. While I was sleeping the stitches broke and I had bled a lot. I didn’t realize how much blood I had lost when I woke up. I went into my bathroom and was looking at myself in the mirror and the next thing I knew I was on the floor and my mother was standing over me telling me we are going to go to the hospital.
I went to the ER and the surgeon came to look at me and explained the stitches had popped. He restitched them and they told me I could go. We walked outside and I waited on the curb while my mother pulled the car around and I fainted again. This time I felt it coming. I even said “Here it comes” when I went down. The next thing I knew I was being put into a wheelchair and brought back to the ER. This time they admitted me and gave me fluids. I stayed overnight.
Once: it was sort of a cross between getting knocked out and fainting. I was jumping off a merry-go-round and one of the bars hit me square in the solar plexus, and upon landing I couldn’t breathe because it hurt so much. Not sure if it actually stopped me breathing and knocked me out or if I fainted from a vasovagal response. For an indeterminate amount of time I saw a pretty field with pschedelically-colored grass and flowers and then I woke up with people standing over me.
One time I stood up too soon when coming out from under a flatbed trailer and a sharp piece of angle iron jabbed me in the back. I continued walking for about 50 ft and then passed out. Upon coming to I passed out 3 more times in the next 1/2 hour. The ER Dr said I had bruised my kidney. Another time I was having a bowel movement when my blood pressure suddenly dropped. I passed out but still had some level of consciousness as I could hear my wife screaming but it sounded distant. She was telling the 911 operator I had no pulse and she was a trauma nurse.
Me? No, but the lil’wrekker is a fainter, I have caught her mid-faint many times. Doctor says it is from slight anemia. We expect it, so we are usually prepared, I say usually, it is always alarming! She had stitches one time in her chin from falling too near a table top. And she claims to have a sprained wrist, right now.
Marching band field show when I was in 10th grade. One minute I was scuttling to my position, the next I was waking up in an ambulance, parked next to the field. The only thing I can remember is feeling very warm and dizzy. It was a cool evening, but we were all wearing our lovely 100% heavy wool uniforms and massive nutcracker hats.
The second time was a few weeks into dialysis. I was already reclined in my chair, but passed out due to too much fluid being drawn. It dropped my blood pressure drastically and out I went. Came to with a bunch of people around me, my feet elevated, and an oxygen cannula stuck in my nostrils. My tech looked at a newbie he was training in, stated “Now, this is not what we want to happen…”.
I have a debilitating needle phobia, and among my awful reactions to needles or even thinking about them is fainting. Once I managed to do it straight onto the floor of a drug store, woke up surrounded by people and by a pool of blood leaking from the back of my head, got carried away in an ambulance.
I have been under treatment for significant health issues for about six months. It can make me lightheaded. It’s what we used to call a ‘head rush’ in the 80s.
Saturday about 3am I woke needing to hit the head. I’m a 50-year-old man. Sue me. Instead of carefully going from horizontal to vertical I swung up like I would have before I got sick. I remember being standing at my bathroom door then waking up face down on the tile. Result: a missing toenail, massive bruising on my right leg and two cracked ribs from banging off the counter on my way down. No idea how long I was down there.
A decade ago, I unknowingly had a case of walking pneumonia, which would cause coughing spells so severe I would be close to blacking out. I was sitting at the table once, reading the paper and cough, cough, cough and some more coughing and the world went bright yellow and next thing I knew, I’m on the floor, #2 dog licking my face, right hand middle finger bent back at an alarming angle.
I’ve had grand mal seizures, which I think is not terribly unlike fainting. In fact, my initial diagnosis was ‘‘syncope’’ so they thought I did faint, at first. When it happened to me, it happened without warning, and in every case I woke up on the ground/floor/bed without a clue what had happened. The first time I was on a hike with a bunch of acquaintances and we were going down a staircase that was embedded into the trail. My husband caught me before I could pitch face first down the staircase. When I woke up, I was sitting on the step and immediately tried to get up and keep going. Like, I had the sense that I was holding everyone back but I didn’t know why or in what context. But they wouldn’t let me get up and they called an ambulance. The ER decided I’d fainted despite the multiple witnesses to my convulsions.
The big difference, at least in my experience, is that when you come out of a grand mal seizure there’s a good chance you won’t know who the hell you are or what’s going on for an uncomfortably long time. It takes me about 30 minutes after a grand mal to get my long-term memory back in place, and the short term is shot all to hell. My husband was present during the first seizure and immediately afterward I knew that I knew him but not how I knew him. In the second case, I had two seizures in a row while working in the office. When I came out of it, I didn’t recognize my coworkers and I couldn’t tell the EMT who was President or what year it was, but for some reason, I remembered where my husband worked. I had a later seizure again that night, but it must not have been as bad because the only thing I didn’t know when I woke up was that I had another seizure. I ended up in the hospital for two days for observation. I lost my memory of pretty much the entire month leading up to the seizures.
It’s definitely a scary thing to experience, especially knowing you have no warning. In every case, I was with people but you are so helpless and confused at first, it’s like you are totally dependent on the kindness of strangers. I wonder if that’s what it’s like to suffer from dementia? :eek: My biggest fear is having it happen when I’m at home alone climbing a ladder or something and waking up injured and confused with nobody around.
When I was younger I was having multiple UTIs, and went to a urologist to see about them. He prescribed some sort of procedure where they dilated my urethra. They used no local anaesthetic, and it’s as painful as it sounds. The morning leading up to the procedure I had to fast. After they were done and I was still in pain, they put me alone into a dressing room to get dressed. I passed out on a couch from lightheadedness and pain. It felt like a black buzzing cloud coming up on both sides of my head and enveloping my face. Gradually I became aware that a nurse was knocking at the door - not out of concern for me but to make me get out of there because the next patient needed to change clothes.
The procedure didn’t make me stop getting UTIs, either.
Yes. I had something bad to eat in Bucharest, and the last thing I remember was the door opening to a bus heading for my hostel. The next thing, I was on a seat in the bus with a couple of Romanian ladies slapping my face and cooing over me. Apparently, I had literally fallen into the bus. I quickly recovered, got off at my stop, but I was sick in bed for a couple of days after that.
I often get woozy and “gray out” when standing too suddenly…
But I went blind and deaf (but did not fall down!) when visiting a friend in a hospital burn ward. There was a little baby in the next bed, all bandaged up, and the thought of a tiny baby suffering from severe burns made me lose it.
My vision went first, and my hearing went next. I was able to stagger out into the corridor, and to brace myself against a wall. I almost fell down, but didn’t quite. My sight came back first, but my hearing didn’t come back for about a minute.
I lost my hearing and vision after falling down the stairs, once. I don’t think I lost consciousness, but damn near. But I wasn’t injured beyond a few bruises. I wonder what causes that response?
Once in school playing that game where you take deep breaths and someone then presses on the sides of your neck. It was lights out pretty fast and woke up with 2 students still hold my arms.