Just call me the Fainting Miss

Dear Reader,

Let it never be said I don’t do things that I can’t laugh about.  Even if it’s me.  Fainting.

So let me tell you the whole story, and please – laugh.  It will make me feel better.

I got to the doctor’s office, almost miserable because I was so hungry.  After my doctor’s visit they wanted to do blood tests.  Since it was just blood work they took me back to the lab with no waiting.  The tech asks me to sit in something that looks like a padded high chair for adults.  I kind of scoffed and thought, “Really?  You want me to sit in that?”  But I didn’t say anything, I sat and did as I was told.

Now, despite having tattoos, I don’t like needles.  I know this about myself so I find a spot on the wall and stare at it because that’s what I do when I start a tattoo.  Until you get past that first few seconds it’s always bad, so I decided to treat it like that.  Deep breaths, focused on a point, concentrate on being calm.

The nurse pokes me and I start thinking about something else.  I don’t remember what because that’s not important so much as I’m not thinking about the needle in my arm or my blood leaving my body.  If I don’t think about it, everything will be fine.  And just like that the lady removes the needle and the plastic tourniquet …. except she didn’t get any blood.  And she starts talking about trying my other arm.  She’s going to have to poke me more!

Oh that’s not good.

In hindsight I should never have looked.  Never ever.

I ask her for a few moments because I feel woozy.  She hands me the trashcan and says to hold onto it just in case – though I would have liked to have pointed out that I haven’t eaten anything in over 12 hours.  I don’t have anything to throw up.

I don’t know what happened next – because I passed out.

When I came to I was more than a little freaked out and disoriented.  I didn’t know where I was, or why there were four people hovering over me, or why I was soaking wet.  My first thought – which I’m going to be forever glad I didn’t say aloud was: Did I pee my pants?  Thankfully my first question aloud was, “Where am I?  What happened?  How did I get here?”

I’d passed out for so long that the nurse had called back two other nurses, one of the nurses from my previous visit and was about to page my doctor because she didn’t know if I had any other medical issues.  They also couldn’t wake me so after wiping my face with water the nurse had doused me with a bottle of water, thus my make-up was running down my face, my clothes were soaked, and it took me a long time to understand that it was just a bottle of water.

The poor tech got me into a room with a lot of recliners and let me lay out.  There were some other people in the room, all old hands at being stuck with needles.  They ‘watched over’ me, telling me to look anywhere but at them since they had needles in their arms and I was having issues with nausea and being disoriented.

It was ridiculous in hindsight.  I laugh now about me having passed out like that.  Thanks to the awesome people I work for I’m doing a work from home day while my body decides to stop the mind-freak.  You’d think someone with as many tattoos, whose had things pierced, would be better with a little blood letting, but nope.  Not me!