I was told a long time ago that I was "vaso-vagal", in that, if you insulted my vaso, I got all vagal. Or if you talked about gruesome attempts to insult YOUR venous system. Or if you dealt with something that I knew was already attached to my venous system. But when they took blood for the first pregnancy test, I didn't get woozy, and I never have since. And even during my fainting years (where I fainted each and every time blood was taken, for about 20 years) I didn't faint at *blood* - like from bad cuts or blows to the head - just at needles puncturing veins.

Vasovagal syncope is what they said about Tim, but I'm not sure where the vaso part came in unless is was the move from hot to cold, which would be annoying to be sensitive to... and yes, they did an EKG and checked him out six ways from Sunday. It's not his heart.

And it is apparently terribly dangerous to faint and not be able to lie down! No wonder you were off for a while, Jim Dixon!

I also have a large (6'3 or so and *big*) friend who faints at medical stuff and who fainted in a tiny exam room and went down in such a way as to completely block the door with his large unconscious body, and they couldn't get in to help him and his head wasn't down... he did wake up while they were wondering if the fire axe would be needed.... a funny story now that he's fine!

Never occurred to me to try anything recreational with needles, though!

However, I've had some rather interesting losses of consciousness.

There was a while when I would get woozy holding bong hits with one friend at his house - never at my house, or anywhere else, there must have been something about *his* bong, and once I actually fainted for just enough time to wipe my working memory clear so that when I looked up, who was this person and why was I sitting with them? until they spoke and suddenly I knew where I was again... (I have a form of prosopagnosia that without context makes faces hard for me to recognize). He hadn't noticed that I'd been out...

Once I got "orthostatic hypotension" (if I stood up, I fainted) but unlike your usual faint, falling itself was horizontal enough to bring me round and I'd come to just *before* hitting the ground, which was completely obnoxious. This one was iatrogenic too - a reaction to IVP dye, which I had not known was a possible complication. Apparently my uncle almost died of the same sensitivity to iodine... during this I heard a blood pressure readong of someting over 25 (!) as I went down... this took days to resolve, while I crawled to the bathroom since if my head wasn't higher than my head I was fine, and I didn't want to be bedpanned.

But once while in an apparently very deep faint I now think was prolonged by my being on steps with my head higher up than my body, but I didn't think about that then, I heard the EMT say "I'm not getting a pulse!" ...

This was another "thinking of" faint - it was fairly soon after I'd had my gall bladder out and I'd had to kind of trot to the bus stop to get to my tutoring for the football players, and I got a little sharp pain inside my abdomen that I started wondering was because I'd torn an internal stitch or something... so by the time I got to work and was sitting in study hall, which was an amphitheater so rows of tables in arcs with a step between each row. I remember putting my head down, and apparently slipped off my seat and onto the floor and was out long enough for them to decide to call 911... but it was the recovery that was so fascinating. Long story coming up!

Usually, when I came to from fainting, I would open my eyes and wonder what I was looking at... oh, it's the grass, sideways. Oh, yeah, I fainted again. And I could usually get up and walk away as long as I didn't get up too fast. But not this time.

This time, I'm not even sure how to phrase what happened, but I didn't "come to" at all. I suddenly appeared out of the darkness and was a point of radiating light and its rays. I remember thinking "this is wrong! There should be stimuli impinging!" and a little while later I thought "No, that's redundant. There should be *stimuli*." Then I thought well, at least I have my intelligence - and that's when I realized I knew who I was. But I was still a radiating point of light and its rays.

Then all of a sudden I could *hear* (Dick Francis once wrote "hearing, as always, came back first" about falling off horses), and *with* hearing came all the ken that comes from hearing - I could tell the voices were somewhere "above" me and somewhat "to my right" (which was fascinating to me as a scientist, as I was still a light-ray complex and had no self to have others be above and to the right of); I could understand what they were saying and knew they were speaking English.

They were discussing whether I was going to wake up or whether they should call 911.

I distinctly remember telling them to call my then-boyfriend, coming up with a visual of the telephone keypad and using it to recall his number so they could call, although they later said I had done no such thing (and they didn't call him, which was toute un autre histoire). I also found this fascinating because I was only just beginning to have a body again, and it was turning out that the point of light had been inside the base of the back of my head, and the rays went everywhere from there into the body that was slowly resolving itself. Pons or medulla, I think.

Anyway, the first sign of having body was a feeling of cold on my cheek. I was wondering if they were putting water on my face, but later noticeed that the cold was also *flat*. I found that interesting. Then I noticed pain, and I realized it was at the outside of my right hip, knee and ankle. Note that during this time I did not yet have legs - just unconnected pain in what were recognizably my joints. After a while I noticed that under these joints, there was flat hardness. After a shorter while I noticed that the places where the pain was coming from were in a straight line, and in line with the flat cold on my face. Conclusion logique: I was lying on the cold floor. And *then* I got my whole body back.

But by then the EMTs were there, and I was worrying (what with the No Pulse comment when here I was, living) until I heard one say to the other Hey, I think she was my TA! in a *pleased* voice, and relaxed - anybody who got through my class liking me was OK by me. I think that once they got me actually horizontal I woke up pretty quickly, but of course they were not about to let me try to stand up so I won't know.

But I think I experienced my very own recapitulation of phylogeny!