If you strive to be supportive to others w/ medical conditions, you probably need to understand how common passing the fuck out can be for some individuals, why it happens, how to ID that it's just a passing out moment, and what you can do to help. This content and advice is about fairly harmless passing out, not things like seizures, strokes, etc. As always, seek medical care for your specific needs. That said...
Someone I follow referenced common symptoms of vasovagal syncope yesterday and it reminded me I've wanted to share some info about this for a while.
Vasovagal syncope is, in lay person's terms, passing the hell out due to a specific trigger that temporarily diverts blood from your brain. Basically, as the Mayo Clinic shares:
Vasovagal syncope (vay-zoh-VAY-gul SING-kuh-pee) occurs when you faint because your body overreacts to certain triggers. These may include the sight of blood or extreme emotional distress...
The vasovagal syncope trigger causes your heart rate and blood pressure to drop suddenly. That leads to reduced blood flow to your brain, causing you to briefly lose consciousness.
Vasovagal syncope is usually harmless and requires no treatment. But it's possible that you may injure yourself during a vasovagal syncope episode. Your healthcare professional may recommend tests to rule out more-serious causes of fainting, such as heart conditions.
My partner has struggled with a hyper sensitive vasovagal syncope response his whole life. He is fine w/me talking about this w/ others as he'd rather everyone know than not. It was actually a lighter effect on him as a kid growing up. He only experienced it in hot steamy showers, but as he has aged it's gotten more sensitive.
Anyone can have a vasovagal syncope response at anytime and it can occur without a specific trigger, too. But some people are more or less impacted and have a larger range of triggers based around personal factors. For me, I've never passed out at all [in my life] but I've come close and it happens when I have been sitting for a while with my legs curled up and I get up too fast...it makes me lightheaded and I experience some tunnel visioning, but it passes quickly for me and I never "go down."
But my partner has passed out more times than either of us can count. And unfortunately, it's FAR more likely for it to occur to him in public vs. at home in comfort because it frequently involves anxiety.
There is no "harm" in the passing out itself of this kind. It passes in a few minutes and typically within 10 minutes of an incident, he's totally himself again. It's just how his body is. But of course it is unsafe in that he could hit his head, etc. In order to help limit his safety risks, we have to be ultra aware of his triggers and avoiding them, as that is the MOST safe way to "treat" and manage this condition, as was getting on a basic SSRI to treat the worst of his anxiety.
Everyone's triggers are entirely different and you may not even know you have one until it hits you. Here's an incomplete list of things that have caused my partner to pass tf out:
Feeling too full [to the point of discomfort]
Intense pain or seeing the effects of an injury, like when he VERY badly sprained his ankle
Having a cold and experiencing an especially big coughing fit
Watching a very specific kind of gruesome content [which is hilarious bc he's a horror junkie and filmmaker]
Feeling like he may puke [when he feels sick to his stomach and passes out, he usually does vomit after he passes out. But puking every time he passes out isn't an issue.]
Hearing about possible side effects of a medical procedure I was having [great story there for another day]
Locking his knees and standing too long in one spot where the blood pools in his legs [at concerts, pinball machines, etc]
Seeing a scorpion coming his way in a dark movie theater [another great story there for another day...we live in Texas]
Having his legs too cramped in a seat or on an airplane
Anxiety of imagining that he may pass out in public [it's such a weird self fulfilling prophecy when your body gets freaked out it's having signals and then creates the very situation it feared.]
As his partner of 23 years and the person most frequently around him, I've become an expert in his triggers and an assistant in these moments. All of his closest friends and family are also aware of these signals and "what to dos" too...
Here's what to look for in someone whose experiencing vasovagal syncope:
Suddenly feeling way too hot or way too cold
Slower speech, sounding and looking "off"
Sudden sweating/clammy skin
A gray/green cast to their skin or other color changes
Experiencing tunnel vision or blurry vision
Eyes rolling back in head
Falling down and body tensing or twitching briefly [will not be sustained like a seizure]
Every person and every incident is different so THESE ARE NOT ALL PRESENT EVERY TIME! But they are what to keep in mind to determine if an incident is likely underway.
Again, unfortunately, this is most likely to occur for someone like my partner when he's in public because anxiety is a BIG BIG factor. People have seen him go out many times and have even said unhelpful things in the moment like "oh my god! He's stroking out!" [Please do not do that.]
Being around strangers when this occurs has caused a lot of issues, such as when he started to go out at a concert and a guy standing next to us thought he was a staggering around drunk asshole and he almost got shoved and who knows what else. Thankfully, I screamed "he has a medical condition!!!!" and aggro dude actually snapped into kindly helping me get him safely to the ground and was very apologetic.
So if a stranger or friend seems to be going tf out, there are things we can do to be helpful. Here's what I've been trained to do to assist him in these moments and ensure he's safe:
Minding his head--biggest safety risk is he will damage his head falling, which has happened one time mildly and we never want to experience again.
Putting him in the recovery position--again, vomiting occurs a lot for him right after he passes out, so choking on it is a real risk.
Gently trying to rouse him--it can take a minute but someone passing out should come to relatively quickly and if you can't rouse them, it's likely something different/potentially more serious.
Laying him down and lifting his legs--thankfully at this point, he can alert me when the feeling of it happening has begun. So if we can get him laying down and his legs up, it helps. Again, this is about his heart suddenly draining his brain of blood for no helpful reason, so I try to get his blood back to his brain.
Keeping other folks calm, away from him or crowding in--I will typically be explaining plainly that he has a condition and he'll come to momentarily--people who don't know what's occurring may freak out, try to administer first aid that is invasive/not helpful, or call 911 which is not necessary [unless he didn't seem normal w/in 10 mins like usual.] He also sometimes yells out when he is unconscious so keeping witnesses/bystanders calm is a big deal.
Asking someone to get him water--if he's going to vomit, if he's just sweat out a ton, he'll want/need it when he's back at the wheel of his brain.
As the person experiencing the issue, here's what he's been trained to do if THE FEELINGS are creeping in:
Immediately retreating from the trigger if possible (exiting the hot room, closing eyes seeing gruesome stuff.)
If standing, immediately sitting/laying down. Like yes, even randomly on the ground in public.
If sitting, uncrossing legs, shifting to different position.
Squeezing muscles to help divert blood (stuff like clenching your butt, squeezing your fists into tight balls, etc., can help.)
I hope this has been helpful!
I'm not a doctor disclaimer of course: It's important that if you have never passed out before and you start, that you seek medical care to rule out other potentially more serious issues. But with my partner, we know exactly what this is and why it happens. Thankfully, he never gets this kind of response or feeling when he's driving or doing things that could be more serious. It seems that because anxiety is so often a factor for him as is leg positioning, he can keep it extremely well prevented in driving. It's really really scary to be a witness to it, but having dealt with this with him well over 20 times now, we at least know what to do!
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