I’ve fainted once in my life. It was in 4th grade, in Bangkok. Kind of ironic, actually. We had an ambulance visiting our school so all the kids could go out in groups and have a little tour of it. They showed us this little bag of red stuff which they assured us wasn’t blood (I don’t remember what it actually was) and then they showed us the stretcher thing. I started feeling lightheaded and then I fainted, so they got a chance to show everyone how the cushiony thingy on the stretcher worked.
There was this one girl who was convinced I fainted because I was scared of the “blood” they showed us. That annoyed me. I don’t know what caused it, but put it down to the heat. This was in BKK, after all.
During the eigth grade end of year school trip to the Milwaukee zoo, I blackout sort of. Our group was in the money house and the urine smell was very bad. I felt bad for about ten minutes. I was looking at the Gorillias and and I went blind. It scoped from the outside inwards. I had seen the teacher about ten feet in front of me, before I couldn’t see. I walked forward and grab the teacher some how and told him I couldn’t see, take me out. After a few minutes outside my sight came back. I could go in any buildings for the rest of the day, without my sight dimming in any of the animal houses. The teacher must have had a real shock when I told him I couldn’t see.
I passed out once and only once in my 47 years. I was at a local bar and had drank one beer (yeah yeah, I know, but it’s true). I woke up on the bathroom floor with several women hovering over me asking if I was OK. Then I got the patronizing, “Oh honey, it’s happened to all of us at one time or another.” I hadn’t had enough to drink to make a fly drunk so it just pissed me off at the time.
I’ve also had two panic attacks in my life. Both times I wasn’t under immediate stress and the feeling was diffferent fo rme. I didn’t pass out either time but I thought I was going to.
I’m sorry it happened to you, Jodi, but mostly I’m glad you’re feeling better. Don’t beat yourself up over something you didn’t want and couldn’t have prevented. Losing consciousness isn’t ‘unprofessional’ or a moral failure. It sounds like you were mortified but look at it as a chance to give your new colleagues credit for decent human concern.
If it’s any consolation, I’m about as delicate as sheet iron but for reason fainted dead away–first time in my life–in my side yard last year. It wasn’t particularly hot, no obvious cause but suddenly I felt lousy and tried to head indoors, then BOOM, right out. I don’t know how long it lasted because nobody noticed. (Yo, folks? Body stretched out like road kill over there…?) I finally just woke up, shaky and aching from falling backwards at full length on the porch floor.
FWIW, the doctor checked me out eight ways for Sunday but never found a cause. And it’s never happened again. Go figure. Obviously the bod had a reason to flop over like a marionette with cut strings but at least all the obvious (scary) causes were ruled out. ::shrugs:: I finally chalked it up as Random Weird Shit.
You’d probably feel a bit more reassured if the docs had found a clear cause but it really isn’t bad news that they didn’t. And even if they had, how much would you have wanted to share with your colleagues anyway? They know you didn’t faint just for yuks and attention. It’s human nature to want to say, “I just got into some bad scallops, it was a fluke, not my fault!” but they already know random weird shit can happen to anybody. It was just Jodi Day on the random weird shit calendar.
Of course all this elevated advice comes from someone who, when insomniac, can still obsess over the time I barfed all over the teacher’s shoes in the third grade. Sigh. Damned bodies just don’t understand dignity.
I had a low blood sugar episode in front of a client where I ended up sort of passing out. I could walk and do things under direction but I was not conscious. There were several of my clients in the office then, and they saw. I took measures to correct my blood sugar but they didn’t work in time. They started working just as I was being walked out to a car to go to the hospital (they thought since I could walk I didn’t need an ambulance…which wasn’t the best decision on their part, but turned out to be true).
For years after that time it was a big joke, and not in a good way. I lost the respect of some clients who would make comments to the effect of not being sure whether or not I could fly/drive/inspect power plants, because I might pass out at any given time. One client used it against me, when I gave him a report on his power plants emissions performance, asking me openly in front of others if maybe I “passed out while writing it”. Another didn’t like the performance my team gave him on a study, and asked me in front of his corporate officers in a restaurant if I’d had “brain damage” from “passing out” while working him the report.
It also got talked about a bit by co-workers, and years after the fact I found out that there had been a high-level dicussion of “should Una be allowed to continue in her present position, given that she’s subject to having diabetic episodes, or would she be better off in a lower-stress job”.
All that from one, single incident in an engineering management career or 15 years or so.
In short, work hard with your doctor to find out what’s happening, and make sure it doesn’t happen in front of clients. It can stain your reputation for a long time.