Vaso Vagal episode (and my first time in an ambulance!)

Another incident, this time not so funny, at work:

I was leaving the staff office about 9.40pm. There's a door from the back to the restaurant and just as I was in the door frame turning around to wave goodbye to a fellow workmate, the water on the ground which was from pouring litres of it to rinse the food particles was seeping out into the restaurant. So I slipped zip-bam onto the ground, twisted and fell on my left side, it was so fast I was up one second and down on the ground the same second.

So there I was on the ground. In a bit of shock, that seemed to be all. My hand was wet from the ground. But ohoho! A nasty little graze cut thing on the base of my palm began bleeding horribly and the skin, about 1cm square of it, was lifted and wonky and attached to my hand by a bit.

So that looked pretty horrible. The worker who I was waving bye to saw this (and a few people being served at the counter saw too, but they were too busy getting their chicken I suppose). He said
"oooh are you alright?" I got up and wobbled a bit, being dizzy from the sudden fall; Stared at my hand which was stinging; Winced at the pain of it. My dad who was sitting right next to where I fell advised me to get a plaster. I went back into the back (what do you call that place? kitchen/office/backstage/storage all in one?) and the coworker was already flipping through the first aid box.
Instead of a plaster, he took a little plastic tube thing full of liquid, "this might sting a little", and squirted it all over my wound into the sink.
Sting a little? Yeah, sure, my hand was falling off but ok. “One, two, three –“and the plaster went on. Nice and blue, for food safety reasons. Suddenly, on top of my already woozy feeling, I felt faint and sick; everything in front of my eyes went bright and twinkled accompanied by a loud rush of buzzing whining noises in my ears.

The manager asked if I was ok; I honestly wasn't feeling how I felt normally after falling and grazing.
"I'm feeling dizzy... there's buzzing in my ears..." So I wobbled over to the chair and sat. The buzzing grew louder. I wanted to vomit and began sweating. My sight faded, everything was a starry mosaic of pale yellow and white and I could only vaguely make out what was going on around me. My hearing faded too, being overcome by the headache which had also appeared. The overall pain of everything: my hand, my brain, ears, eyes, chest, legs, bruising from the fall... It totalled to a wave of misery in which I was drenched for I don't know how long, it was probably a minute or two but felt like the longest most horrid minutes of my life. You can imagine how scared I was, I'd never felt so sick and faint.

Next thing I knew, my dad was there. They asked if I wanted water. Yes. I drank it, nice and cold, even a bit too cold, down my throat. I gulped it down, wishing it would relieve the pain. I wished for anything that would relieve how I was feeling.
"Should we call an ambulance?" -Manager
"Yes" - Dad
"Let's get her out into the front again" - someone

They asked me if I could get up, as slowly as I wanted, to go sit in the restaurant. I managed, with I don’t know how many people grasping onto me and keeping me lifted. Tottering out into the restaurant like an ancient granny or something, my dad wrapped his jacket around me tightly, they sat me down on a chair by the door so that the cold wind attacked me every few seconds (this might have been unintentional), and I could make out the sound of manager on the phone to 111 (oh golly, I thought – never had the emergency service for me before!).

So I ended up half sitting, half lying on a chair with my dad behind me hugging me tightly like I was dying, by the door, legs a bit cold, and the manager sitting next to me, probably worried, I could see her face because I go told not to move, even though I just wanted to scratch my face or something. I also got told to try and stay awake, which was a bit of a bummer, since I was definitely sleepy. I certainly felt better: my eyes cleared a bit, ears stopped being literal pains, and I could even breathe better. So I was feeling a little bit, like, me leaning here like a vegetable isn’t that necessary… well, I thought I’d let my dad feel better by doing what he wanted (to not move).

The ambulance came. About, 3 minutes later? Geez, it was a very long 3 minutes if so. Because I could see out the window, golly excitement was rising a little at being the centre of ambulance attention.

A forest green and yellow uniformed paramedic lady walked in. “hello. Is this her?” “Yes, thanks for coming,” (manager). The lady looked me up and down. She asked me exactly what happened, so I tried the ole recount, but memory failed when asked whether I hit my head on the fall. My consciousness seemed to please them, I heard numerous mentions of ‘good, very good’ (especially from the Doctor later on). Excuse me? Good? This is the biggest injury I’ve had in my whole life! (That I could remember). (To anyone who’s been through this and worse: sorry, because I’m new to the whole medical mishap thing.)

Concussion was an idea. She felt around my head, pushed down in places, and that seemed to be fine. Good, I wasn’t head-bleeding. Then they suggested we go to a medical clinic, the one down the street and if that closes at 10pm then we’d try B*Clinic. Yes. Ok. “Now, we’ll move you into the ambulance (yikes!), while dad drives behind.” (Dialogue compressed for reading ease.) So I left the store, tottered to the ambulance, climbed up the steps through the back and lay on the bed with the nice white sheets on the left, as was told.

I didn’t want to dirty the sheets. That my feet dangling off the edge of the bed the whole trip was a bit awkward. A* the paramedic was cheerful and nice – she asked me for my details, filled in a form on a clipboard like an important person, and took my blood pressure with a piece of machinery wired to a thing that went around my arm and tightened amazingly. Beep, beep, and the number on the screen rose until it could squeeze the life out of my bicep no more. I looked around, half listening to the driver (another cheerful lady) yell out the window checking for signs of openness in the first clinic, then drive on; so this was the inner ceiling of an ambulance. Huh. Nice enough. My first ambulance ride, nothing special, pain subsiding…

Arrived at B*Clinic. Got to the counter. Felt like I couldn’t walk normally so I went like an oldie. Sat down on a waiting chair while dad filled out a form and A* talked to the receptionist. ‘Project Runway’ was showing on TV; I watched as the final 2 designer-wannabes were interrogated by coldish judges; one outfit was made of human hair. Nice, creepy, but at least he tried.

“You ok?” (Dad)

“Mhm.” (Me)

Tick tock…

Nurse S* with short dyed red hair (not ginger, red) and a face about 30s lead me to a cubicle place and I lay down on the bed with nice white sheets on the left (again) but this time I put my feet up, not feeling up to another half hour of awkward twisted lying down. Eventually my shoes left an eyesore of a wet patch on the sheet – sorry, laundry people, for wasting a whole clean one!

She talked to me about stuff, took my blood pressure again, noted that it was low (how low?) and decided to busy herself with cleaning my cut while we waited for the doctor. She took off the plaster, wiped (almost scrubbed) the blood/cut, and, oho, I felt a little tug:

“Did you just rip my skin off?”

“Yup. I was wondering whether I should or not. Then I decided to go for it. Yesterday we had a guy come in here with police dog bites all over his arms, and I - ” with a wave of her arms, indicated that the guy’s arm-skin had to wave goodbye.

Chatting lead to talk about KFC, which, she indicated, she did not like – the smell and the food etc etc… she was a fun person, indeed. I decided that it wasn’t every day I get to lie in clinic and talk to medical people. So, putting on my random social face, asked her about her journey to nursing. She talked actively and agreed and nodded and said “It’s a very rewarding job.” We got to her whole education and training history when Dr C*, introduced self, looked at me, asked for a story recount and my age which was smaller than he expected (“yes she doesn’t look it does she” – Nurse).

It was now that he uttered “good very good” a lot. I expected that it was that I was responsive and not bleeding profusely and my arm on which I fell didn’t seem to be broken. But it was still a wee bit off putting, being in small pain and having the doctor look and sound as if it was his birthday party.

He explained my incident to me.

“It seems like, from what you’ve told me and how you were feeling, that you had what’s called a Vaso Vagal episode. Now, it’s nothing serious, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, it’s very common. It’s when your heart rate drops temporarily due to any trigger, you could be scared, or sleeping, or have an incident, in this case your fall, and the blood pressure wasn’t high enough to push the blood to your brain, and thus you feel faint. You know in the olden days, when ladies would (he put his hand to his head and fainted dramatically here)? It’s like that. So now you can go back to normal, do everything fine, play sport, work, etc…”

Well, that’s just fine and dandy! Nice to know I had a dramatic lady faint, almost.

“Any questions?”

“Why would your heart want to slow down?”

*chuckle* “it’s not meant to. It’s like this. Your heart is controlled by two systems – the sympathetic system and the vaso vagal system. The sympathetic system is what makes your blood pressure increase, like say if you were excited or scared, and your heart rate rises. The vaso vagal system takes over when you’re relaxed, say sleeping, and your heart rate drops. So for a second there your heart must have slowed down from your fall, to make you feel faint.”

That still didn’t explain how or why falling on the ground would make my heart slow, but I smiled and nodded and put on my random social face again, asking him about his medical career history.

HEY! Turned out he went to the same high school as me! I mentioned a few teachers that would have been there in ’88 (good old school magazines) when he graduated, and he remembers them, and I’m pretty sure I scared him then and there. I told him I wanted to do something medical in the future. This is the first thing I got:

“Well, it’s an, interesting, uh, job. It is.” Reassuring, definitely.

We left the cubicle, waved goodbye to the people I’d met today who were standing by the reception area chatting somewhat, got told to rest well, I thanked them, they waved back, I sat in the car and dad drove home. Much more relaxed. By now it was about 11pm.

Gosh. What a day.

*Names have been suppressed for identity and security reasons.