It's a long way down from up here

I've mentioned before that I am a large person. I'm stand 6 foot 8 inches (2 meters) tall and weigh about 250 pounds (115 kg). There are a lot of advantages to being tall. (one advantage is that you aren't short). There are also some disadvantages. For example, it is difficult for me to find a car that I fit into comfortably. Airline travel can be tortuous in those tight seats. I hate the stupid "how's the weather up there" jokes. When walking through trees, I often get a face full of spiderwebs, because my head is the first one that's been through there for a while. It's also a long way down from up here.

Dizzy
I need to be careful when I get up. You can imagine the massive change in blood pressure that my system undergoes whenever I stand up. When I was a teenager, it was especially bad. I remember several times standing up, then waking up in an awkward position on the ground. It's a long way to fall, Usually, it wasn't that extreme- I'd just feel dizzy, see the black and white static, and grab onto something until it passed. As I've matured, the stand-up-too-fast blackout has faded away.

Starting the IV
When I was first married, I underwent my first medically-caused blackout. I was having an outpatient procedure done, and they had to start an IV. They started the IV easily, and everyone left the room to chat in the hall. I started to feel really funny. My vision went blurry and out I went. Apparently my wife found me and ran to get the nurse. The nurse was able to wake me up and calmly stated, "this happens all the time." That's what medical people always say to get the patient to leave them alone. I don't think that starting an IV commonly causes blackouts.

The Epidural Incident
A few years after that, I was 'helping out' at the hospital as my wife prepared to deliver our third child. We men are a lot of help with the birth, you know. Anyway, the anesthesiologist arrived at about 2 in the morning and proceeded with the epidural. He had her sit up on the edge of the bed and lean into me. I was to stand next to her and 'help'. The doctor was behind her on the other side of the bed, and a nurse was standing beside me. I'd never seen an epidural inserted from that close before. It was really cool! I was fascinated by it and was really concentrating on what the doc was doing.

The next thing I knew, I was sleeping cozy in my bed and I couldn't figure out who all these people were in my bedroom. Apparently, I fell over suddenly and the poor little nurse, who was something like 5 foot 4 and 100 pounds, tried to catch me. Luckily neither of us were hurt and everything went smoothly from then on. The doctor told us that a husband had passed out the week before and had to miss the delivery because he was down in emergency getting his head stitched up.

At Least He Had Cookies
My most recent experience happened while giving blood. I've given blood a lot of times without incident, so I was not expecting anything to happen this time, either. I was babysitting my youngest who was 3 at the time. The two older boys were at school, I believe, and were not expected home for a long while. I took the baby over to the church and filled out all the paperwork. When it was my turn to be drilled, I set him down at the treat table and told him to have a couple of treats and to behave. Everything went well until the end. the nurse had just pulled the needle from my arm, and she had me hold a cotton ball on the wound as I held my arm up over my head.

I was in a dark room with thousands of televisions stacked up all around me, kind of like the scene in the Matrix with the Architect. A different scene from my life memories was playing on each monitor. Then this mean man was yelling at me and wanted me to tell him my name. I looked up and there were about 10 people crowded around my reclining chair, looking down at me with worried looks on their faces. Apparently, I had been out for a long time and I hadn't responded to two of the ammonia packets and they were freaking out. They wouldn't let me get out of the chair for a LONG time. I sat there sweating like crazy- something that happened made me really hot. They put an ice pack on my chest to cool me off (fyi: if you want to cool off fast, put an ice pack directly over your heart.)

I'd peek over at the baby every so often. He was happy as a clam eating cookies. I have no idea how many cookies he ate, but there were a lot of empty wrappers when I was finally allowed to go get him. He didn't mind at all.