One of my friends with a long complicated medical history has fainted or blacked out many times in her life, since childhood. To my recollection, I have only fainted or near-fainted in the past year, both during medical examinations or injections. To be frank, after my first time prostrate and feet up in the gyno office, the doctor left the room and I was left to fend for myself in taking off the paper dress and putting my clothes back on. Of course, this was too much to ask--my blood pressure had dropped so much that I basically fell off the table after the doctor left. I ended up slumped in her chair, with my shirt on backwards and my fly undone, as she came back into the room and, warily eyeing my state, proceeded to go over the details of my (fine and dandy) examination, only after which she mentioned that I looked "a little pale." I knew I would have been embarrassed, but my head was too woozy to care at the moment, and I was glad she had come back into the room after what seemed like a decade of stars and spins--maybe she could help me with my fly.
Anyway, she told me that this near-fainting meant I was probably a bit vasovagal, which I looked up on wikipedia and seemed to be a fitting psychological/wimpy diagnosis.
The same thing happened as the tooth men were searching for my veins on Monday, having cinched and found nothing. I was already lying down, but I was still suddenly afraid that I'd somehow die in the hands of Jeff and Christopher and their tooth associates, who had all swarmed in as soon as Jeff gave me a blue showercap. The doctor started flicking the veins on the back of my hand and I felt weak and spinny and wanted to be put under already, but not six feet under, and not in this state, and not in a room with Diaryland lavender walls. As they chattered about my jumpy veins, "What if I feel like I'm fainting or dying?" escaped from my throat, and the tooth men said to take deep breaths, honey. But it still took too long to feel the effects of the amnesiatic gas, and to have to breathe cold tubed oxygen up my nose. But this, again, is the cry of the wimp, who doesn't EVEN faint, but just almost-does, usually to the point of a hasty irrational confession, or to the point of being poorly-dressed. And the point WAS to kind of go unconscious anyway. I just don't like that dying feeling in-between.
Obviously I have never done [insert drug here].
The paper instructions for post-wisdom-teeth-extraction (which my mother blatantly neglected) include a bit about rinsing the oral cavities with warm salt water after meals, I think as a disinfectant sort of measure. It is strangely satisfying, and might become part of my daily routine! You know, once I make myself consistent and reliable.