the second time i fainted was only a few years after the first. i was in middle school. it was summertime and my brother and i were swimming at the community pool.
it must have been an olympic summer, because i was pretending to be an olympic swimmer. it was crowded in the pool and there wasn't very much room, but i had enough space to swim 20 feet or so and try that really cool end-of-the-lane underwater flip that the swimmers do to reverse direction.
the problem was that i had no idea how to do that flip. i misjudged my distance and jammed one of my fingers against the wall of the pool. and i jammed that finger hard. it hurt like holy jeebus.
my step-mom (witness to the first fainting) took me to see our doctor the next day. as i sat there on the exam table, finger throbbing, waiting for the doctor to come into the room, i started obsessing about all the painful things he was likely going to do to fix my finger. i got nauseous and very, very anxious.
and once again i became woozy and the world went dark. just as the doctor entered the room i fainted and fell right off the exam table.
the doctor woke me up with smelling salts. good GOD, that stuff is terrible! i remember pushing his hand away, and he kept trying to shove it closer to my nose. i wanted to kill him. get that foul-smelling shit away from me!
after i composed myself and got back up on the exam table, all he did was tug gently on my finger and then put it in a splint. it was pretty anti-climatic.
Posted by xta at April 1, 2004 12:28 PM | TrackBack