Hey, I Almost Died!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Had the flu, missed Thursday and Friday at work. Went to the doctor, got some codeine cough syrup and some Tamiflu, started both on Friday.

Felt better Saturday, but that night, I kept having to get up to use the bathroom - plenty of fluids for the flu, plus plenty for the medicine in the cough syrup, right?

Third trip, just as I’m finishing up, I get light-headed. I flush the toilet, turn to leave the bathroom, and …
BAM!

I don’t think I tripped on anything, but suddenly I am face down on the thin little rug covering the bathroom tile. Main points of impact appear to be my knee, shoulder, and cheek. I do some quick concussion checks, slap a bandage on my shoulder - rug burn and a bruise is a nasty combo - and go on to sleep.

Sunday, I feel okay, except a little tired - but coming off the flu and a head injury, who can blame me?

Back at work today, still a slight lingering congestion from the flu and a slight achiness from the fall, but I am reflecting on how bad that fall could have been if I hadn’t fallen quite the way I did. Hitting my nose or my skull on the floor, or the vanity, for that matter… yikes.

Scary!

I’m guessing that either the codeine or the Tamiflu threw my system off enough that I got to experience post-urination syncope. A first for me. Last time I fainted was during a bout of food poisoning and heavy vomiting eighteen years ago. Fortunately then I blacked out while already in a kneeling position.

Hope it never happens again…

2

Try sitting to pee, wait a bit, then get up.

Also be sure to CAREFULLY measure the codeine and use ONLY per directions. That stuff can be quite strong, don’t even consider taking a swallow out of the bottle.

And read ALL medicine labels - INCLUDING over the counter medicine [cold/flu] if you are using any of that. Some of these things will interact DANGEROUSLY with other medications.

Be sure to tell your physician about ALL the medications you are taking, the dosages and frequency. You can also discuss this with your pharmacist - make a list of all your medicines and ask if they are all OK to take together.

You can do this online by searching google.com for the words…

drug interaction screening tool

3

A rather substantial percentage of syncope calls I answer at our 9-1-1 center involve someone losing consciousness while doing their business in the bathroom. Family members are often a bit freaked out but, as the OP surmised, this is usually relatively harmless unless injuries sustained in a related fall are serious.

The relatively minimal amount of straining that occurs while urinating or defecating is enough to trip a lot of people into a vasogal syncope. Being dehydrated and on codeine wouldn’t help things at all.

4

Speaking of being dehydrated… Drink plenty of fluids - electrolytes - Gatorade - chicken noodle soup.

Check your blood pressure. If too low and you are too dehydrated, you can’t replenish the fluids on your own! That is an emergency room thing and they need to give you IV fluids. You will instantly feel like new!

5

Oh, I’ve been staying hydrated. The guaifenesin in the cough syrup requires plenty of water and I take that pretty seriously. Also Orange Juice. And I checked out the possible drug interactions with the doctor - the only thing I was taking alongside them were OTC pain medications - Tylenol and Advil. But I appreciate the advice!

I guess I posted this more for the purpose of processing it, to see if other folks had had similar experiences … and in the purpose of gathering less commonly-known dangers that can crop up with a minor concussion that I should look out for besides intensifying headaches or dizziness/nausea.

6

A co-worker almost died the other week – her only CO monitor was in her basement :eek: so she didn’t hear it. Her daughter normally wouldn’t have come by but happened to, and got her to get up and out. /tangent

7

I never even knew that was a thing. Similar thing happened to me in high school. I had some kind of illness, used the pot, got up, and woke up in the bathtub a few seconds later.

8

Almost? That’s all ya got? Come back and post when you DO die!

:stuck_out_tongue: :wink: :smiley:

I hate flu.

9

Gotta admit, I’d click on that.

10

I almost died once. I dropped my keys as I was getting in my car, and lost five seconds picking them up. At the first traffic light, it was turning yellow, and I lost a minute or so waiting for a light I would have otherwise hit green. Another mile or so down, a truck passed a car on a curve a minute before I got there, and nothing happened and both drivers went on their way, and neither knows how my dropped keys saved my life and theirs. Droppping my keys placed me a minute down the road from that curve at that moment.

How do I know that happened? Well, I don’t, but at some time in my long life, there was probably a potentially fatal event that would have killed me if I had not, for some stroke of luck, evaded by a few seconds. Furthermore (think about this) everyone who has ever been kllled in a car crash would not have been, if they had just dropped their keys.

11

[unsolicited advice]
Do you live by yourself? You don’t mention any family in your post.

I live by myself and I have some other single friends, too, and we all do this. Whenever I take a bath or shower or get up on a ladder (or stand on a chair) for any reason, I put my cell phone on the floor beside me. No kidding.

Last year, before I moved my mother into assisted living in my town, she lived by herself in California. (She turned 92 yesterday and had always been independent.) She passed out as you described while on the john and wound up lying on the bathroom floor in her own poop for about seven hours until a neighbor started to wonder where she was.

A friend of mine said he takes the phone in the bathroom when he showers but leaves it up on the counter. I said if you’re lying on the floor in a state of semi-consciousness, you might not be able to reach the counter.

Sunday morning I had to get up on a ladder to set my kitchen clock and I almost didn’t go get my phone and put it on the floor at the bottom of the ladder, but now I’ve kind of gotten superstitious about it. So I did and set the clock without mishap.
[/unsolicited advice]

12

I feel so much better about being a total klutz now! :slight_smile:

13

It’s much more fun if you are conscious. Try that next time.

Er, that’s not MPSIMS-Supportive, is it. Okay, don’t do that. I like you and would be sad.

14

I’m on the young side of 40, and do not currently live alone, but I imagine I will sign up for LifeAlert when the time comes. :slight_smile:

15

I think you are making light of my near-death experience, and I am not sure why. :dubious:

16

It wasn’t intended tomake light of anything, but only to put it into a perspective of mathematical probabilly. Falls are rarely fatal. Besides, I don’t think “what it could have been” qualifies as a near-death experience:

Being blind, I take headers like that every couple of years. I don’t consider them to be near-death experiences. I had a car, in a parking lot, run over the tip of my white cane. Just routine in my life.

17

Same thing happened to me about 7 years ago taking NyQuil. We were at a ski resort in the hind end of nowhere…my husband woke up in the middle of the night and found me on the bathroom floor lying in a pool of blood. I had passed out leaning over the toilet bowl thinking I was going to barf and hit my head on the tile floor. The cut was only about a half inch long but man it bled like crazy…hubby was very freaked out. I ended up with a massive, very colourful bruise under my eye and everyone spent the rest of the week looking at him sideways. “I fell in the bathroom” sounded so made up
:-/

18

Fair enough. I just think of all the hard objects in there and all the comparatively soft spots on my skull, and think of the whole thing as a bullet missing me by a few inches, you know?

19

I nearly keeled over on the toilet myself once… though in my case there were no medications involved and I was definitely not straining. I’d been feeling queasy for a couple hours and finally decided to sit on the throne and see if that might solve the issue.

Instead, next thing the room started graying out. I recovered before conducting any unwanted physics experiments but I still get twitchy just thinking about it.

And yeah, any kind of fall we survive could be a LOT worse. I once tripped going down some outdoor stairs. Fell, with style (apparently I did a full 360-degree somersault). Landed with a nasty bruise on one upper thigh (the muscle still has a bit of a divot), a minor bumped head (no concussion), and a broken elbow (radial neck and I’m damn glad that was the only neck that got broken).

A day or two later while changing clothes near a mirror I spotted the big bruise right over my spine, midback. That one could have gotten me a spiffy new wheelchair for Christmas if I’d landed just a bit harder :eek:.

20

I had something similar happen to me when I was 17 or so; was not feeling well, went and used the toilet (unsuccessfully) and as I stood up, I felt light-headed, so I grabbed the sink, and next thing I knew, my mom was on the other side of the door freaking out and I was lying on the floor, having loaded my drawers in my unconsciousness.