Pain: Part Three

What is it about not feeling pain that makes me lose consciousness...? It's bizarre. The first time I told myself it was just a fluke. But when two, three, and four happened a couple weeks ago, I was properly humbled. So here are my terrible, embarrassing stories. :)

ONE.

A year ago I went to have a couple of moles checked out. The derm PA said, eh, no big deal, but do you want them removed anyway? I said, hey, why the heck not? (I figured even if they scarred it wouldn't be any bigger or more unsightly than the moles. And those things bugged. Always itching and bleeding and stuff!) So, with Seth sitting in a chair nearby, they went forward with this little surgery. Injections. I'm fine. Slicing. I'm fine. "Ok, I'm just going to cauterize this now." [Sound of rhythmic sizzling.] I'm . . . ffff . . . . BOOM.

I'm GONE.

Never felt a thing. Never realized I was psyched out. (Was I psyched out?) Thought I was totally fine.

I wake up to the nurse reassuring a wide-eyed Seth that his Mom was ok, "she just went to sleep for a little while." Poor thing! And poor me! It took a good twenty minutes to not feel that cold, clammy, nauseated, I-want-to-die feeling.

TWO.

Last week I went to get new glasses. Note to self and to the masses: Don't let good insurance dissuade you from going to JCPenney, Walmart, or LensCrafters to get your eyes checked. :) I went to a for-real place—the UCSD Shiley Eye Center—and had no clue what kind of torture chamber they'd release me to. To think I showed up hoping they wouldn't do the puff of air in my eyes! HA! Child's play! I'll take the puff any day, knowing what I know now....

So they test my eyes. Figure out my prescription. Excellent. I'd love to leave now, thank you.

But no! Suddenly, without warning, she says: "I'm going to test your eye pressure now. These are some numbing drops. They'll sting a little." Before I can protest, she's hovering over me, prying open my eyes like a torture artist, dripping little yellow drops of death at me.

Gross.

I'm really creeped out by this. Numbing drops? I don't want my eyes to be numb! That's creepy.

THEN, she assaults me with this machine that comes toward me, toward me, toward me. Closer to my eye.... AGAINST my eye...!!! Holy cow! It's pushing my eyeball!!!

"Ok. And now the other eye...."

I'm beyond creeped out now.

Wow, I'm really dealing with this like a champ, I say to myself. I'm not even trembling or crying for my mommy, or curling up into fetal position chanting my demands to be released.... Such a stud. (Truth was, I couldn't really feel a thing with those numbing drops.)

It ends. I sigh to myself relief that it's over now.

I look up to see my torturer hovering over me again. "We're just going to dilate your eyes now." [Drip. Drip.]

And . . .

I'm GONE.

Haha! Seriously. Two drops in my eyes, and that infernal clamor in the ears that says you officially cannot talk yourself into staying conscious buzzed all the way through me. And I started to dream about sitting around with some people talking about happy things.

Here's the strangest thing about fainting (anyone else with me on this?): I dreamt a slow, easy, low-key dream about a scenario that lasted a good half-hour or more, but when I woke up she said I'd been out about two seconds. Bizarre!

She left me to dilate reclined in the torture-chair, checking on me every few minutes. And a half hour later, I felt totally back to normal again.

My torture artist comes back with some kind of mirrored light. She directs me to look various places while she reflects light into my dilated eyes. One. [Ugh.... I don't feel so good.] Two. [Oh gosh, the ringing is back.] Three. This time I don't look, I put my face down, and just as I'm thinking, "oh please, not again! This is ridiculous!!" . . .

I'm GONE.

Again!

An hour-of-dreaming later (really only a few seconds) I come to, but just barely, and this time I have to try in my delirious state to talk myself out of puking. I'm successful. I also start dreaming up revenge for my torturer which, luckily for her, I was too ill to go forward with. ;-)

I feel cold and clammy all from my ears through my toes. My bones want to puke. All I want to do is curl up in bed and, I swear, sleep for two years.

I start to dream about being in my bed and realize she's saying something to me. The fogginess of her words, and the way in which I come upon them halfway through makes me half-realize (a half-realization is all my brain could muster at that point :)) that I had actually lost consciousness a third time. I think. I'm not entirely sure.

It's all pretty foggy. :)

As I start to very, very slowww...ly feel a bit better, she starts plying me with crackers and water. Because, in a torture chamber, that's all you can count on for food: crackers and water. Am I right? :) She expresses concern that I'm hypoglycemic. I'm too tired to say, "Lady, didn't you go to medical school? I know as well as you do—or should—that 'low blood sugar' among non-insulin-shooters doesn't really exist." I just laugh inside and eat some cracker. Oh yes. I can feel my mythically low blood sugar popping right back up.

Then she postulates, "Maybe it's White Coat Syndrome," to which I replied, "Well, my husband's a doctor, so let's hope it's not that!" She thought that was the funniest thing she'd heard in years. :)

My torturer finally leaves the room and I try—oh how I try!—to send Matt a text message. But I can't see! Haha! I'm typing, typing . . . . And thinking with much internal laughter, "how pathetic! I can't stay conscious! And I can't even type an SOS to Matt! I'm dyin' over here!!"

The text didn't go through. Figures. (Can you expect a Torture Operation to have cell phone reception?) When it came through an hour too late, it looked like this: Save me i keep passing out'misery.

Hahahaha!! We had a good laugh over it. I only wish he had gotten that while he sat at the computer filling out application forms and thinking I should be getting home from my uneventful eye appointment any second. Haha! Oh man. It kills me.

When I'm finally feeling like I can stand up again—in spite of my bones still wanting to puke, and my numb, dilated eyes making my head want to explode through my sockets—she comes back to . . . finish the job. You kidding me? What is wrong with her? Is she really that concerned that I might have some hidden glaucoma she had missed? My goodness. Let me free! Let me free!!

I survived. I picked out my glasses. In my determination to never, ever, not ever get my eyes checked again, I spent what felt like a gazillion dollars on nice frames and lenses when an hour before I had planned on spending about nothing. :) I felt pretty good about that.

THREE.

Remember the moles? One of them turned out to not be entirely removed and has also scarred more than I like. Since it's still itchy as well as unsightly, I had a plastic surgeon finish the job the other day. (Doesn't it sound marvelously scintillating to say, "I got plastic surgery"? Haha!) I didn't think I'd be psyched out, but man! I just don't know myself anymore!!

I jokingly considered asking him to not numb anything since I apparently only lose consciousness from not feeling pain, while I'm a stoic with superhuman powers when it comes to feeling torture. But Matt had a better solution . . . .

I took Sudafed ahead of time to reduce my vagal response.

And . . . ?

It worked like a charm! :) Let's hope this madness has ended. Eesh!