CONCUSSED

Pain, even the observation of it in others, triggers an abnormally severe reaction in me. I break out in a cold sweat and I know within about 3 seconds that I’m going to faint. After decades with this condition, I’ve finally self-diagnosed (the internet has made us all doctors) and have come to learn that this condition has a name — vasovagal syncope. I faint when I feel pain.

Apparently there are all kinds of triggers, different for different people, that causes this response and, for me, it isn’t the sight of blood, but is the perception of pain. It doesn’t even have to be my own. I awoke on the floor of a hotel room in LA one time after having watched Hillary Swank get the lights punched out of her in the movie “Million Dollar Baby” that was on TV. I have fainted from breaking off a fingernail. I have fainted when I’ve had menstrual cramps and intestinal issues. I have fainted when I hit my knee or funny bone.

Twice now I have had serious injury from a fainting episode, on both occasions, I was experiencing pain from intestinal discomfort and going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. My husband awoke to find me lying in puddles of blood on the stone floor in front of the toilet with huge gashes on my eyebrows (I now have a matching set of scars — one on the left brow bone and one on the right). He has fearfully taken me to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night to get stitches, worrying that that the authorities will think he has been beating me. The black eyes that have resulted from these episodes (and lasted for a couple of weeks at a time) haven’t helped any.

The fainting is worrisome, but the injury that occurs as a consequence is more so. Stone floors are unyielding. Falling face first at dead weight onto one is an unforgiving exercise. After the gash has closed and the bruises have subsided, though, the real menacing injury emerges. It has been four months since this last episode occurred and I am still having vertigo on a daily basis. If I lay back on the couch or turnover in my bed, I feel extremely dizzy and uncomfortable. Getting up in the morning requires several minutes of steadying myself to wait for the room to stop spinning. My doctor says this is “Post-Concussion Syndrome.”

This experience has made me think about concussions and wonder how athletes who suffer repeated blows to the head can function. If one traumatic episode can have such lingering effects for me, what do chronic, repetitive blows do to them?

I am tired of the room spinning. I’d like to be able to lean back in bed with an awareness of my center of gravity. It’s inconceivable that this could be someone’s reality on a permanent basis.