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Fainting

10:45 / 27.05.04

I've never fainted myself, and I must admit I find it a very odd idea. It seems like such an amazingly extreme physiological response to anything. I've only ever known of one person who fainted and that was years ago at school. She fainted because she touched a hot pan, of all things. I mean, wouldn't yelling "OW" have dealt with the matter adequately?

Anyone ever fainted meeting a celebrity? Or at a piece of really bad news or a big shock? Or even just from hunger? Have you known many other people to faint? Is it as rare as I think? Why would your body do something so potentially dangerous to you?

10:50 / 27.05.04

I have no idea of the physiological reasons behind fainting. However when I was at school and they were showing us pictures of STDs to try and scare everyone off sex one guy fainted when they showed a rather graphic picture of gonorrhea. At the time this seemed quite funny, though looking back it wasn't that amusing. Or that interesting. I'm not sure why I'm telling you about it to be honest.

10:53 / 27.05.04

I have fainted several times (at least five - maybe more). Usually as a result of dehydration/excessive heat. It is a most odd sensation. I feel dizzy and woozy - my immediate response is to go and lie down somewhere cool, often the nearest loo - something very comforting about lying on the floor, staring at the base of a loo in these situations...

The last time I remember actually fainting was a couple of years ago - I had worked a long shift in the pub, was probably dehydrated, had a post-shift drink and felt myself going so ran for the loo - but by the time I got to the door I was too feeble to open it - I remember pushing it and it coming back at me, then blacked out and came to (probably about 5 seconds later) flat on my back on the floor.

If you really faint (as opposed to feeling woozy) you don't drape gracefully over the nearest piece of furniture - you just keel over with a terrific crash...

10:55 / 27.05.04

(My sister has trouble going round exhibitions which include instruments of torture, etc., as they make her feel woozy and she has to go and sit down. Don't know why as she has no trouble peering at dead things pickled in jars, but there you go...)

10:59 / 27.05.04

My mum used to faint all the time, but doesn't do so anymore, something she puts down to "the change". I remember when I was growing up and she'd faint and I'd be like "oh mum" and loads of people would gather to gawp and try to help. Bless.

The only time I've ever lost consciousness which was not through sleep or substance abuse was in the bathroom once. I'm not sure I fainted as it felt different from how it looked when mum did it, but not sure how to differenitate blacking out with fainting. Maybe I refer to it as blacking out as it sounds more manly than fainting - I just don't know!

Anyway, all this happened when I was a teenager, I was (as I still am) in the habit of taking very hot baths. Getting into a hot bath is difficult and it's a question of making it hot and then once you're aclimatised, topping it up and drainging it repeatedly until it is evern hotter!

As some of you may be aware, standing up when you're in that hot state can be a bit odd and is similar to the swoons due to growing up too quickly (literally) I had during puberty. (Blurred vision, weak joints, etc)

So these two things combined made it a rather odd experience getting out of the bath. I sat down on the loo for some respite hoping to recover but as the room was filled with steam it got worse and worse and I could hardly see a thing my eyes had "swooned" so much. Next thing I know, my bum is still on the loo seat, but my bloated form, slippery and hot from the bath is wedged between the wall and the cistern.

Fuck me! I thought - what happened. Must have lost consciousness for a bit. Had no idea how long I was out for, but felt really odd and weak. I got up slowly, opened the windoe and lay down on the floor of the bathroom, curled up with a towel for a pillow until I could breathe again properly and felt better.

Very wierd experience and gave me a lot more sympathy for my dear mum!.

Hattie's Kitchen

11:02 / 27.05.04

I fainted once, when I had to take my ex to hospital after I'd accidentally injured her during sex, there was blood everywhere, and I'm such a wuss when I see blood anyway...and they gave her the full internal examination - they brought those clampy things out to open her up, and that's when I felt my legs giving way and my head thudding on the floor. So no, I wasn't a great support to her, really.

11:29 / 27.05.04

did a couple of times as an undernourished student. very unhip. generally connected to not recovering from substances properly, but once a paniced day of essay writing did it. red spots around the edges tapering to a dark tunnel, wake up threee seconds later with a face full of floor and screeching pals nearby. likesay, very unhip.

Tryphena Absent

11:43 / 27.05.04

I was once a bit ill (you know that tired feeling that screams virus or flu) and tried to take a shower and about a minute in my vision started to cloud over. Naturally I thought 'fuck, I'll crack my head open or drown if I collapse in here', so I stumbled out of the bathroom and fainted on the floor outside. It was all very dramatic. I awoke to my mother telling me so and commanding me to go back to bed, she looked typically unconcerned as you'd expect from someone who's had gazillions of operations.

12:44 / 27.05.04

I have fainted loads of times. The first time I remember, I was about 10 and talking to my mother about the possibility of having my ears pierced (she wasn't going to let me anyway, but thought that after I'd really considered it I wouldn't want to go through the pain...). Anyway, at the mention of the earring actually going through the skin I passed out.

Other occasions include when I've been waiting to have an injection and when I've been standing too long.

The most embarrasing occasion what when I was at the cinema watching 'Existenz' with my boyfriend. During the scene when the socket was fired into the back of the hero I passed out and the boyf had to lie me doen on the floor amongst the popcorn. Ooof! Not very sexy!

I don't mind being out for the count coz you quite often have very vivid dream-like experiences, but passing out and coming round again is horrible. Especially since you don't know how long you've been out for or where you are. Apparently I also have fits when I faint - my body spasms and my eyes roll back in my head. I obviously don't know anything about this, but I always come round feeling achy where I've tensed my muscles so much.

Oooh. I'm starting to feel a little woozy now, so I'll stop talking about it!

14:01 / 27.05.04

I used to regularly faint or just black out, but I don't really that much anymore. The doctor said it was due to low blood sugar or low blood pressure or low something or other, can't remember too well now. Often lying on the floor or eating sugar would help it.

Places I've blacked out: doctors' car-park, sports shop, biology lesson at school, a concert, many times at home, probably some other places that I can't remember. Lying on the floor in the middle of a sports shop was a bit embarrassing. Dropping a glass of drink down the stairs at home was annoying.

I always seemed more prone to blacking out after hot baths and also in supermarkets, due to having problems with the type of lighting used.

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

14:02 / 27.05.04

I've fainted 3 times in Commercial Kitchens, when the heat has been over 50 degrees and it's not been properly ventilated, as I usually run the pan section, which involves grills and gas hobs.

It's rather awful, I come to with a pulsing headache usually.

But it's better than when I have seizures, those usually involve blood and bruises, sometimes stitches.

14:25 / 27.05.04

I used to faint all the time at the sight of blood when I was at school, it got to the point where even a discussion of the subject was enough to trigger a black-out. So there were large parts of O level Biology I just wasn't around for, and I even passed out in church once, during a sermon about the crucifiction. So it wasn't all bad, I suppose.

For anyone who suffers from this, the best thing to do is lie down on a cold floor as quickly as possible - while this might seem strange to whoever's around you, the chances are you'll wind up there anyway, and anything's better than hitting your head.

10:18 / 28.05.04

i blacked out (the more manly cousin of fainting) a few years ago when i was in the hospital washing the gravel out of the cuts in my hand, after being hit by a car.

the nurse handed me a nail brush and said "theres no painless way of doing this" so i just went for it.

i woke up like 30 seconds later wondering what the bloody hell happend

Goodness Gracious Meme

10:35 / 28.05.04

yeah, lots. At the height of depression/stress a few years ago, I was 'fainting' pyschosomatically several time a week.

This basically means that I thought I was fainting but was actually just shutting my eyes and falling over. Basically an extreme response to stress - total shutdown. But would feel exactly like I would after a real faint - shaky, teary, upset...

But also have 'truly' fainted occasionally, a couple of times during hot summers in london due to overcrowded tubes/trains/too hot work clothes/tiredness.

Woke up a couple of times on London Bridge platforms. Once surrounded by concerned people and a lovely guy who came all the way to new cross with me and waited for a friend to come pick me up.

And once draped over a bench with everyone ignoring me. Had obviously just been pushed out of the train and left. Charming.

Vision would start going yellow at the edges, yellow would spread and I'd white out.

Whisky Priestess

19:46 / 28.05.04

I have only ever properly fainted once, and it was due to extreme illness and food and sleep deprivation. Like fun!

My fainty tale ...

I was sixteen. I was up in London for the first time, alone, coming to stay with a lady barrister for a week for career-decision work experience/shadowing. A few days into the (somewhat dull) week my throat started to hurt. Within 24 hours it was so swollen and sore inside that I couldn't swallow saliva, let alone food, without severe pain and was hawking up pretty phlegm globs whenever I got near a sink.

The lady barrister was thrilled that I could fit into her size 8 skirts (you have to wear black and white formal-ish stuff if you're in a courtroom on the lawyers' benches, or did then): I, knowing that this was due to extreme food deprivation, was less so. After a 48-hour near-fast I went to the doctor, but not before I'd wept my way across Waterloo Bridge, studiously ignored by all, because I couldn't find the address.

The doctor examined me and said he'd take some blood. Now, I've never had a problem with the sight of my own blood and have donated it several times with no trouble, but the spectacle of the ol' dark red filling that syringe ... I stmbled over to the sink and informed the doctor calmly that I thought I was going to be sick. No, I wasn't. I woozed back to the chair and sat down, but then my vision started to go black around the edges.

The world shrank to a tunnel. I heard a very distant thump (subsequently discovered to be the sound of me and the chair hitting the floor as I keeled over backwards) and awoke very confused and staring at the ceiling.

I will spare you the details of the eventual resolution of my problem (doctor discovers quinsy [abscess in my throat], drains it painfully by pressing on it with a spoon*) and merely observe that the fucking size-8 skirt cutting off the blood to my upper body didn't help none ...

*OK, I won't.

Lilly Nowhere Late

20:44 / 28.05.04

I nearly faited just a little while ago when given news that an acquaintance of mine was murdered yesterday. I don't know this person that well and don't feel I really have much right to be so mournful but I know his poor widow a little less vaguely and saw them both hours before the murder when everything was still normal and I keep thinking about her and how I felt when I was widowed(actually did faint then) and I just come over very swoony. Like the floor is tilted and tunnel vision and hot faced.
I have fainted dozens of times in my life, mostly for silly things like fasting or sleep fasting or drugs or illness. Once when I broke my hand.
Grief fainting is a bit different than physical cause fainting. I'm not sure how, but it is.

20:52 / 28.05.04

oh, my. lilly i'm sorry to hear that.

The Prince of All Lies

21:06 / 28.05.04

Lot of fainters in here...I never blacked out in my whole life...except one time I drank too much and passed out while sitting in the john...and a couple of times I woke up in a dumpster after drinking too much..but I didn't "faint"... it was more like "I'm awake, I'm awake, I'm aw........."... On second thought, maybe I shouldn't drink so much..

Lilly Nowhere Late

21:06 / 28.05.04

Yes thank you. It is dreadful news. Cruel world and all.

Let's get back to fainting.
There was a girl at my high school who fainted all the time. Just fell off her chair and wouldn't come round for some minutes. They finally worked out that she had some sort of pinched nerve or something. I remember she was extremely brainy.
I also fainted a couple of times when I was pregnant. One day I was trotting down the pavement between the bank and work and totally just collapsed. It was very hot out and I was the size of a small house. When I came to, there were loads of people trying to help me and see if I was all right and whatnot. I jumped up and fled back to work where I proceeded to cry hysterically. Pregnancy, eh? The other time I fainted outside the hospital after a checkup for the fainting thing and no one tried to help and instead looked at me as if I were a leper. That time I got the giggles upon rousing. jeez!

01:17 / 29.05.04

WP, I'm pretty sure I've misread your post ( well it is rather late, ) but you didn't seriously go on a two day non-eating binge just so you could fit into a barrister's uniform, did you ? Please tell me it ain't so. As a veteran of law school, ( solicitor's version, ) I wouldn't honestly have a slash on that discipline if it was on fire, I don't think. It seems to encapsulate the four worst qualities in life, at least so far, in that it's a) boring, b) difficult, c) both boring AND difficult, and d)
essentially, arguably, a bit, y'know, pointless. That whole Rumpole of the Old Bailey thing... Fwankly, I dethpair.

12:06 / 29.05.04

An ex of mine used to regularly faint. In most cases, it was because she had just given blood or the like (she used to make a break for the door as soon as possible so she could pass out in her car and they wouldn't ban her from the blood drive), but psychological factors can and did set it off as well.

The most notable instance had us doing fetal pig dissections. To hear it from her, she watched the pigs being passed out of the vat, emerging one after another, and all at once she had a horrifying vision of an endless procession of fetal pigs pickled in formaldehyde, stretching off to infinity--WHUMP!--her head hit the desk.

Took me near five minutes to rouse her.

I don't personally know of any instances where I've fainted, 'cept one and its a maybe. I was having a shower. Next thing I know, I'm sprawled on the bathroom floor with a splitting headache half-wearing a towel. Did I faint, with the heat and all that? Did I slip and slam my head off the edge of the sink, destroying all my short term memories?

18:08 / 29.05.04

I yawned very wide in a very boring lecture once and my jaw refused to shut. It was very paiunful and very frightening. I couldn't call out and was a shy little 18 year old who would have rather died than draw attention to myself at the time. After what seemed like a longggg time but was probably just seconds, I fainted or blacked out. My head banged, unconscious, onto the desk then my gaping, fixed jaw was knocked shut.

Occasionally I still yawn very wide and, as I feel my mouth stretching open, I panic and stifle it.

Only other time I can remember fainting was when I saw my first birth as a student nurse. The head wasn't even out, just the sight of the baby's crown emerging from the vagina and next thing I knew I was in the Expectant Fathers' Room recovering. The midwife conducting the delivery congratulated me later on fainting in the right direction, away from the sterile field, although that was entirely the result of chance.

Whisky Priestess

18:15 / 29.05.04

"WP, I'm pretty sure I've misread your post (well it is rather late, ) but you didn't seriously go on a two day non-eating binge just so you could fit into a barrister's uniform, did you ?"

GOD no. You so don't know me ...

I'd eaten hardly anything for two days because when I swallowed it felt like fellating razor blades. Fuck Atkins, try the Quinsy Diet! It's great!

18:59 / 29.05.04

I've fainted fully once, but I've gotten close to it many times. I can look at blood and dissect things, but with me the only thing I can't take is hearing about it...
In middle school, I remember my biology teacher talking about his mother who had a vein taken out of her leg and put into her heart and I just started getting dizzy and seeing yellow everywhere. Another time was in High School when someone was talking about a poison that made you bleed through your pores. Anytime I hear about something like this, I tend to imagine it happening to me and then apparently my brain can't take it and decides to start shutting down.
As for the time I actually fainted, I was in elementary school and all I can remember is having a dream (while I was fainted) about a really mean teacher who was going to turn us all into apples. Everyone was really scared when I woke up because my eyes had rolled back in my head.

12:32 / 30.05.04

I've never fainted but my ex did once. We were at a Halloween party and this was the first time I'd introduced him to my friends. It was one of those costumed events and in response to this he'd dressed in red and coaxed his hair into horn shapes. My flatmate and I had gone to a lot of trouble to come as 'Mulder and Scully'. I must've have phoned dozens of costume shops asking for a Dana Scully wig. Each call would result in a "Dana who?", until finally one enthusiastic man said "Well we have something circa first series". I think it was actually a Rita Hayworth hairpiece.
Anyway, one of my oldest friends has some sort of diabetic condition which he doesn't control very well and he often falls unconscious. This time he passed out in the loo and knocked his head on the toilet bowl on the way down. While we were administering to him my new squeeze fainted. He went the same colour as his clothes and keeled over in the corner. I've no idea why this happened. At the time he said he was feeling weak and asked me to spoon sugar into his mouth. I did so, but my 'hair' kept on falling into his face. My defining memory of this evening is standing in front of the bathroom mirror in a borrowed trouser-suit, trying to scrub my make-up off, feeling fucking ridiculous.
He didn't faint again in the 6 years we were together. I always had a suspicion it was an attention seeking thing.
I know, I'm so caring.

15:12 / 30.05.04

I've fainted quite a few times: every one of them in stiflingly hot bathrooms. The first time was when I went to stay with my dad in Japan. It was incredibly hot and I was jet lagged. I stumbled out of bed to put my contacts in, started to feel like I'm about to collapse.

The last time, though, it was illness plus heat that did it, and I managed to hit my head on the toilet seat and *somehow* twist my ankle...

It was just like being put under with anesthetic, really, apart from the even weirder feeling when you come round...

Madman in the ruins.

09:19 / 31.05.04

Not fainted but been rendered unconsious a few year ago.

I was at a martial arts seminar and being a well bult bloke am usually picked on to be the demonstrators model. A "Master" of another discipline of Kung Fu and not one of my usuall training partners picked me to demonstrate a rolling lock on as I was about 4 stone heavier and 6 inches taller.

He throws me to the floor and twists my wrist and elbow around up my back, which was bearable. Then he applies a litte more twist and a red hot pain shoots all the way up my arm to my shoulder. I relax and tap the floor with my free hand. And the "Master" carries on applying the lock, It felt like my entire hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder and back were on fire.

So the next thing that happnens is I feel very light headed and tired and realise that actually theres nothing more I want to do that lie on the foor and have a little sleep. Cos the pains not that bad and feels far away like its happening to somone else.

So I just shut my eyes and have a litte doze.

Next thing The "Master" is waking me up with a worried look in his eyes.
"Are you allringht"
"Yeah Fine" I reply.

I go sit back down with the rest of my club who all look pretty worried. Who then inform me I was unconsios for about 5 seconds. To which my only (and silent) reaction was "Thank god I didnt piss myself then" As I would have never have lived that down.