Blackout #71

More evidence that I am living in a bad foreign art film and cannot read the subtitles:

I went to the military eye doctor yesterday to have him take a look at my beet red right eye, which has taken to sealing itself shut every morning with eye spackle. Perhaps it could be infected? The doctor nods at my symptoms and we face off on either side of that Star Wars-looking headpiece that harnesses the power of the sun and shoots it through my eyes and into the back of my head. Through the giant green blots in my vision I see him opening a bottle of numbing eye drops.

I don't do these.

For some reason that still remains a mystery, I faint every time these drops go in my eyes. This has been tested and retested to a comic degree because no one believes me. So I go ahead and give it a try, for what is now the sixth time an eye doctor has borne down on me, dropper at the ready: "Hey, so is that alcaine? Please don't put it in my eye because I faint. Seriously. I don't know if I'm allergic or what, but I faint and sometimes have a seizure too. Please don't use it on me."

Somehow, this translates into: "Hey, so I'm batshit crazy and nama nama nama blah blah blah," because the doctor replies, "Oh, this stuff is different-- it's just a dye that helps me see infections--" drop, drop! "-- now just lean in and hold real still... you probably won't like this next part..." And then the rest of what he's saying dissolves into cotton and handbells and I remember my face dragging across the headpiece thing, and then reaching for my feet, and then nothing.

I wake up to startled (yes, startled!) male nurses and a retreating doctor saying, "Watch her-- I don't know what happened! There are no warnings in her file." I flop my mouth like a fish and wonder where I am and a giant Hawaiian guy tells me to breathe through my nose while he tries to hold down my jerking shoulders. I slur drunkenly that I might barf and he brings a trash can, but I can only dry heave. My hands and face are numb and I am drenched in sweat. For the next fifteen minutes, the Hawaiian guy sits calmly by my side and reports on my returning color, joking about how I may be a pale white girl, but no one should be that pale. Then he says, "So I guess you're allergic to the alcaine, huh?"

"That's what that was?"

"Yeah. It's a numbing drop."

"Really. You know, this is the sixth time that's happened. No one ever believes me."

"Then you should go to an allergist and get it checked out. Get a medic alert bracelet and have it put on your driver's license."

The Hawaiian guy leaves for a minute and the doctor comes back, but now the official explanation is that I must have what's called "White Coat Syndrome," which, he explains, basically means I have some sort of psychological freak out around doctors. Nevermind that I googled this term and it actually refers to unexplained high blood pressure in the presence of doctors, and that fainting is technically caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure. Silly patient.

So now I have yet another brain reboot under my belt, adding to my already impressive and dramatic collection, and am still no closer to answering that all important question, "What the fuck?"

Pieces of the puzzle: 1) I faint when sitting up for blood draws and when getting alcaine drops, once when my appendix was getting ready to explode, and once when I was drugged up from wisdom tooth surgery, 2) sometimes I have fun seizures that scare the living shit out of healthcare professionals, 3) I have incredibly low blood pressure, and, perhaps most tellingly, 4) my mother and brother faint from blood draws and proximity to exceptional gore, though this last one has never claimed me.

I'd say the score is a tie between heredity, low blood pressure, and fear-- but tell me, is there a reason NOT to be afraid when doctor after doctor just plows past blatant warnings from my repeated experience? I'm not sure how to make myself clearer than "I know what that is, don't use it on me, I will faint."

Perhaps my mistake is using logic, and words. In the world of the foreign art film, sometimes symbology has far greater sway. I think next time I'll kill a seagull and dance around weeping and see if that helps.