I am not fine with blood.
Needles? I can cope with needles. Give me an intra-muscular injection all you want, medical types, I won't shy away, but mention veins, arteries or b..b..b..b..blood, and you'll have a very limp, very unconscious me on your floor.

I did not know this, however, until I was the grand old age of 20. Whilst working in a local sweet factory, I developed what the doctor thought was bronchiitis, and got a smashing 6 weeks paid holidays from work. The abtibiotics didn't seem to work all that well as I hacked up lungfulls of white gloop from my aching bellows, but after about 6 weeks it started to clear, and I reluctantly returned to work. (As a side note, I've had a sporradic cough ever since, which is nice).

Now. All was well until about six months later when my cousin, sporting some lovely freshly cracked ribs, came to my house. It turned out that he had cracked his ribs coughing, and the doctor had done some tests which concluded he had whooping cough. The doctor had asked that I go along for tests too, just to find out if I had also had the bug. by then it was acadmic, but I was curious so I went along.

At the time, this doctor was not my regular doc. He took me in and proceeded to take the blood..... no real problems, nothing major. He drew two little vials of blood from my arm, then waved one of them around in front of me as he explained about how long the results would take. I remember wondering why his voice was echoing like that. "Meh" thinks I, and I leave the unusually busy doctors surgery.

I walked across the gravel outside and noticed that it sounded as though the gravel was inside my head. There were lovely purple spots in front of my eyes as I reached my car, and I discovered my right arm wasn't working. I tried to open the car door with my left hand only to feel something hit me hard on the side of the head. It was the pavement. Not knowing how I had ended up on the floor or why (and admittedly my brain wasn't running at 100% capacity here) I struggled, groaning, to my feet and resumed the effort of getting into the car. I heard a voice and turned to see, through the haze, a blonde person approaching me. "That's lucky!" I thought, thinking it was my then fiance, but no, it was a mate of mine's mum, who thought I was drunk and trying to drive home. She had to hold me up against a wall as I slurred "Blood.... doc-torr.... need to.... sit...." When she realised what was happening, she tried to take me into the aforementioned PACKED waiting room. Incoherent and half unconscious I may have been, but I was already plenty embarrassed as it was and there were about 20 people in that room. I clamped on to the wall with what dwindling strength I had and tried to beg her to let me lay down in my car. Fortunately, my cousin (it just struck me the irony, it was the same cousin) drove past and stopped to take me home.

I have since had blood taken and despite the docs best efforts, it happened again. Only way to beat it is to let me lay down until it passes, which would be roughly 20 seconds if only they would listen but I usually have to spend 5 minutes half unconscious with my head between my legs before they'll listen to me. Knowitalls.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 20:29, 2 replies)

its called
A vasovagal attack.
(lochii, Thu 7 Aug 2008, 22:16, closed)

Is it?
I've always just thought of it as one of my "things" and accepted it. I had a similar thing when I was told my mum had cancer too, which was odd.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Fri 8 Aug 2008, 3:57, closed)