Someone I know has a #blood/injury type #phobia—the kind that causes full-on #fainting, not just stress/fear.

I'm trying to help them get through a blood test. (The phobia is so severe that just *discussing* the topic can cause a faint.) If anyone has advice, *especially* from direct experience of this, I'd be grateful.

Looking to address both the fear and the faint response.

(Before offering advice, remember to check the full thread!)

The internet slams a man drinking water while his partner gives birth, but a nurse sets them straight

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/the-internet-slams-a-man-drinking-water-while-his-partner-gives-birth-but-a-nurse-sets-them-straight

Just watching #RobertSapolsky talk about #fainting and ideas of why. He doesn't really cover fainting in nonhuman animals, but I've seen a chicken faint in traumatic circumstance and slowly recover afterwards. He suggests that it's especially adaptive for humans because we're bipedal so getting a bit of enforced horizontal time is likely to be good for preventing some kinds of blood loss ... well I suppose chickens are also bipedal, but...? 🤔

#syncope

"Look here upon this picture and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two presidents.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow?
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars to threaten and command,
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill—
A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your president. Look you now, what follows.

Here is your president, like a mildewed ear
Blasting his wholesome predecessor.

Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed

And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?
You cannot call it policy, for at your age
The heyday in the law is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment. And what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion. But sure that sense
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled,
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was ’t

That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. O shame, where is thy blush?

Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a citizen's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will."

#shakespear #hamlet #trump #fainting #uspol

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1oqac7t/throwback_to_when_obama_caught_a_fainting/

#Cat owners are 'fake #fainting' and the reactions from their #feline friends are unforgettable

https://www.upworthy.com/pretend-faint-to-study-cat

That moment when you realise you might be the family recipe 🐔😱

#ChickenTrauma
#Pollo #fainting #squak
#RoastChicken #squeaky

Because of my POTS - I find it very difficult to spend time in the kitchen. Standing in general is difficult - but that’s compounded in a big way by the heat and smells generated by cooking.

Fainting while cooking is far more dangerous than fainting in most other scenarios (with the exception of the shower) and I’ve had a few close calls.

One day I was roasting sweet potato in my oven and when I opened the oven door to pull out the baking tray - I lost consciousness. I came to with the oven door still open, the apartment was a sauna and the sweet potato wedges were all over me and the floor.

It’s a miracle I wasn’t badly burned - though my food was well and truly ruined 😂.

Needless to say I do most cooking in my microwave now - or rely on carers to do my food prep for me.

Still - I found I needed to do something to help my brain not associate kitchen with danger. I had to change the narrative somehow.

So I got a high stool that I can sit on and still reach the counter - and I created a little “inspiration corner” that’s visible from all parts of my kitchen.

Two signs with quotes that make me smile - and my favourite New York Grand Central Terminal clock (so that I always know what time it is!)

#pots #dysautonomia #chronicillness #spoonie #longcovid #mcas #mastcells #mecfs #covidisairborne #CovidIsNotOver #disability #ableism #disabilityrights #decor #fainting