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johnnycae replied to your post “bedbugsbiting: My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It…”
For me the thing is I once passed out from pain, face on the floor and everything. Since then whenever I am in pain I tend to think that if I am still concious it can’t be that bad, I guess?
(This is in reply to that post about the pain scale that’s gotten a few thousand notes, and I’m sure this person meant to reply to someone else who’d reblogged it, but I just saw this and wanted to address it.)
Here’s the thing: All kinds of things make humans pass out, but the actual mechanism that causes it is that, for whatever reason– vertigo, blood sugar problems, hormonal imbalances, heart palpitations, whatever– your blood pressure has taken a sudden catastrophic dip.
Sometimes the thing that caused that is honestly not that serious a problem. But it’s simply a mechanical issue. Your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen– even a fraction of a second’s drop in blood pressure can interrupt the flow enough for that to happen– and so you can’t maintain consciousness.
You might not be in very bad pain, really, all told, to pass out from it. It’s probably bad, sure, but it may not be the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. It’s just that it was enough that your blood pressure got mechanically disrupted. Maybe you held your breath, maybe your heart skipped a beat or two, maybe you just totally abruptly decompensated.
But that doesn’t mean that other pain you’re experiencing is less bad. It may be less acute in that instant, or maybe your body is compensating for it in other ways.
I say this because I’m an easy fainter. It’s a little embarrassing. I’m a pretty stoic person, I can tolerate a great deal of pain or trouble, depending on context. But if I donate blood, which is a very routine thing and really doesn’t take that much, I always have a catastophic loss of blood pressure right after, and I faint, and then I’m fine. But of course people freak out, and if you say, as they’re beginning the process, “Oh, I’ll faint afterward but just give me a minute”, people don’t take that well. So I just… well, I couldn’t give blood for a decade, in the middle of all of that, because of the mad cow scare, so I got out of the habit, but I haven’t resumed it because it was so embarrassing to pass out for no reason afterward. (I have P L E N T Y of blood volume, believe me, that’s not it.)
I once passed out cold, faceplanted straight off the toilet, because I had torn a muscle in my back and I just could not handle it. It hurt bad, I’m not going to lie, and I’d gone to bed hoping to feel better, and overnight it had swelled and gone into spasm and I was in agony. But it hurt worse when I was moving, and getting to the bathroom was so painful I was sobbing. I sat down on the toilet and was okay, it was less acute, I was gonna breathe through it, I was okay, I might not even have needed to call for help to get back up– but at that point it caught up to me and I passed the fuck out, wham.
Believe me, though, it hurt way worse when I fell off a flight of stairs and sustained a high ankle sprain and rolled my other ankle. But I didn’t pass out then, I just lay there and cry-laughed for a while.
(Your picture was not posted)
johnnycae replied to your post “bedbugsbiting: My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It…”
For me the thing is I once passed out from pain, face on the floor and everything. Since then whenever I am in pain I tend to think that if I am still concious it can’t be that bad, I guess?
(This is in reply to that post about the pain scale that’s gotten a few thousand notes, and I’m sure this person meant to reply to someone else who’d reblogged it, but I just saw this and wanted to address it.)
Here’s the thing: All kinds of things make humans pass out, but the actual mechanism that causes it is that, for whatever reason– vertigo, blood sugar problems, hormonal imbalances, heart palpitations, whatever– your blood pressure has taken a sudden catastrophic dip.
Sometimes the thing that caused that is honestly not that serious a problem. But it’s simply a mechanical issue. Your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen– even a fraction of a second’s drop in blood pressure can interrupt the flow enough for that to happen– and so you can’t maintain consciousness.
You might not be in very bad pain, really, all told, to pass out from it. It’s probably bad, sure, but it may not be the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. It’s just that it was enough that your blood pressure got mechanically disrupted. Maybe you held your breath, maybe your heart skipped a beat or two, maybe you just totally abruptly decompensated.
But that doesn’t mean that other pain you’re experiencing is less bad. It may be less acute in that instant, or maybe your body is compensating for it in other ways.
I say this because I’m an easy fainter. It’s a little embarrassing. I’m a pretty stoic person, I can tolerate a great deal of pain or trouble, depending on context. But if I donate blood, which is a very routine thing and really doesn’t take that much, I always have a catastophic loss of blood pressure right after, and I faint, and then I’m fine. But of course people freak out, and if you say, as they’re beginning the process, “Oh, I’ll faint afterward but just give me a minute”, people don’t take that well. So I just… well, I couldn’t give blood for a decade, in the middle of all of that, because of the mad cow scare, so I got out of the habit, but I haven’t resumed it because it was so embarrassing to pass out for no reason afterward. (I have P L E N T Y of blood volume, believe me, that’s not it.)
I once passed out cold, faceplanted straight off the toilet, because I had torn a muscle in my back and I just could not handle it. It hurt bad, I’m not going to lie, and I’d gone to bed hoping to feel better, and overnight it had swelled and gone into spasm and I was in agony. But it hurt worse when I was moving, and getting to the bathroom was so painful I was sobbing. I sat down on the toilet and was okay, it was less acute, I was gonna breathe through it, I was okay, I might not even have needed to call for help to get back up– but at that point it caught up to me and I passed the fuck out, wham.
Believe me, though, it hurt way worse when I fell off a flight of stairs and sustained a high ankle sprain and rolled my other ankle. But I didn’t pass out then, I just lay there and cry-laughed for a while.
(Your picture was not posted)
