#presyncope

[stillfuckingtired]

Me lying down: I feel pretty much fine. What am I doing lying around? I should get up and do something. Or at least sit upright, damn.

Me when I’m upright: oh, Jesus. Oh, damn. Oh, RIGHT—this is why I was lying down.

[mxrr0rball]

presyncope is such whump material. cause yeah its not fainting, but sometimes that feels worse. sometimes its standing up, walking a few steps and feeling fine for a moment until it hits you so hard your vision goes black and you lose all sense of where your body is in space, grappling with a dizziness so profound you stumble to your knees. theres the pounding heat in your head. theres the temporary loss of your ability to recognise yourself as a person -- in this moment, your world is limited to this disorienting, searing darkness. sometimes my presyncope includes repetitive jerking/twitching/wobbling in all of my limbs.

then theres the coming out of it. it doesnt last very long at all (at least for me), so its over before you can even register what happened. youre on the floor, head throbbing with fading pressure as your vision slowly clears and darkness recedes past the edges of your vision. your heart is going a million miles per hour. youre physically unharmed, but getting up still feels much harder than it should. if others are present, their concerned gazes make it feel that much more shameful. if youre alone, youre left feeling pathetic and tired, dreading the effort of dragging yourself to your feet.

even mild presyncope is a fun situation to put your whumpee in. whether thats partial loss of vision and a racing heart whenever they stand, or a prolonged period of increased heartrate and mild dizziness that has your whumpee sweaty and lightheaded as they try to ignore it and focus on tasks.

it could come about as a result of dehydration, not having eaten, injuries, etc. or you could give whumpee a chronic condition -- something like POTS, which -- for extra whump -- could perhaps have been caused by an infected injury that whumper gave them. POTS tends to flare up as a result of stress, so that certainly complicates whumpee's trauma recovery. bonus points for a stoic whumpee who brushes off caretaker's concern every time they almost faint. "its fine, this is normal, im fine. you dont need to fuss."

[chronicallypots-memes]

[callingauguste]

 Having a chronic illness is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You know you’re going to be sick on Wednesday because you can’t stop working yourself to the ground. But that won’t stop you from working yourself into the ground. Crazy. I know…

[shyyycatsblog]

My parents saw me go from happy and excited to dead serious about needing to sit down today for the first time ever. They've never seen me have a pots attack or anything where I actually almost pass out, but I walked into the kitchen and I was excitedly telling them about a package I got in the mail when suddenly my vision started to go dark and my body felt really heavy so I just stopped talking and I began staring ahead trying to see if it would go away on its own. It didn't, so I said, "I need to sit really bad," because that's all my brain could think lol and they helped me pull out a chair so I could sit. By then, my hearing had started to go quiet, too, so I knew it was getting bad. After sitting for a while, I started to go back to normal, but my poor mom looked so scared! I tried to brush it off since I'm so used to this by now, but I still feel bad for worrying her. 🥺

[sweetiedelle]

I might write out some description of my medical episode to help writers out with writing them into stories!

for example: presyncope when standing up with pots. this is specifically AN experience, my experience and doesn’t describe everyone’s presyncope

I’m sit up to get out of bed. I feel lightheaded, it feels like everything in my head gets pushed up against the top of my skull creating pressure. Then I stand up. Sometimes I stand up very slowly but usually I stand straight up cuz I’m inpatient. Best case scenario I feel like I’m spinning like top for a few seconds and my legs feel a little heavy but then I can keep walking. But if I do have a bad episode:

My hearing cuts out, and sometimes a pitched ringing starts. My heart is either really fast and fluttery or go goes thud, thud, thud and I feel the heart beats in my whole body.

I get an itchy tingling that spreads down my legs. It’s a specific tingly feeling that only happens during presyncope. My feet go numb and my legs burn and almost feel hollow. I get really bad vertigo and sometimes lose my balance. Sometimes I have to immediately get to the floor, but often I’m able to just lock my knees and stand there. My vision starts going black and fuzzy from the edges in. Usually it takes over 70% of my vision and then vision starts to slowly fade back in. But sometimes it takes my vision completely and stays black for up to a couple minutes.

I feel trembly all over and I don’t really notice my breathing (sometimes i end up hold my breath) but it’s shallow and trembly. My face is hot and there’s a super loud electric buzzing filling my head, almost like a bunch of bees surrounding me but sharper. I have to wait for that to fade and then the other symptoms start to fade. Sometimes I can think but often at the peak I can’t think at all.

Usually an after affect lingers for 3-5 minutes, lightheaded, and a really bad pounding headache, tremoring hands, bad balance, and leftover flushing heat.

Something that occasionally happens, usually when it’s bad enough to end up on the floor is a short convulsion episode and twitching, usually after all the symptoms have hit but haven’t faded yet. This is called myoclonus and it can be muscle tensing, twitches, spasms, or the whole body shaking. It’s not a seizure but it can be confused for one. When this happens it’s called convulsive presyncope (or convulsive syncope if you actually faint).

One more details to note is that when I start getting symptomatic while upright, I sometimes still feel okay, until I lay down again. Then my heart beats super loud and slow and feel really out of breath and dizzy.

[muddy-pawprints-on-my-mp3-player]

Limbs heavy. Like getting ready for an x-ray, but the leaded apron was put on horribly wrong. If I were struck, maybe I’d spin around forever from the centrifugal force. A human top. I want to laugh, but my jaw is full of weighted sand. My tongue a thick, fleshy slug no more my own than my fists at my sides, dragging me down, down, down. A doughy clay man on a stick frame too thin to bear his weight.

Everything. Everything sliding sideways. Wondering if the sensation of my teeth falling out and clattering to rest on one side of my gums like dominos is a dream or real. It feels real. The sound is the same.

My shoulder makes contact with the wall.

It rattles more dominos loose. Or maybe they shattered. I don’t know. I can’t afford to know, my thoughts a goldfish in an ocean of molasses. Jaw agape. Drooling. Mouth dry, but it keeps coming. Head pounding, rushing water in my ears. Is my heartbeat there? Or has that been injected with lead too, fossilized mid-beat? Am I dying?

*no, not dying,* the faintest of voices insists. A voice? My voice? The molasses demands to fill the pocket each floundering thought occupies in the sea of nothing. *not dying.*

the little voice wades through the muck in tiny galoshes, making far too much noise for my aching mind. Emptying the contents of filing cabinets into the mire to be ruined. Finally, a word. A word written on a faded index card no larger than a postage stamp.

*Presyncope.*

Pre?

How could this be pre-anything?

Maybe pre existence. Maybe void.

My eyes are glassy, unseeing. Searching my surroundings, trying to make sense of the shapes & shadows but there’s no recognition. A tunnel of cotton smothers my face. More cotton seedlings sprout, all over me, little pinpricks of nothingness. I panic but my pulse is too slow. Too heavy. Too heavy even to panic. The plants surge into maturity, bolls of cotton inside my lungs. Lungs that won’t expand but eagerly collapse with every exhale. My vision is obscuring more and more. Milky white. Cotton.

Limp in my cocoon, my senses are dull. Dull like lead.

Lead jaw.

Lead arms.

Lead knees.

They buckle.

[digitaldulc]

me and the er are best friends!! i love the erie background noise in the er and when my hr suddenly drops i love to hear the concerned machine beeping, it’s like walking into a the pitt scene!! wow so cute!!