Miscellaneous

Micturition Syncope

By jeremyblachman

No, don't Google it yet, you'll ruin my boring story.

So the reason for no posts this week is that I came down with an upper respiratory infection the other day, which now seems to be getting better, and I suppose is my punishment for coming back to New York for a couple of weeks while the strike's still going on, and not telling my insides that we were leaving the pleasant weather of LA to return to winter.

Anyway, woke up Tuesday feeling pretty terrible, coughing, fever, not so fun.  Worse on Wednesday, figured it was the flu or something.  Wednesday night, I got up at about 4:30 in the morning just to go the bathroom, and didn't actually feel that bad, went to the bathroom, and immediately afterwards I felt the life completely drain from my body, totally felt like I was going to pass out or something -- I've never passed out, so I wasn't sure that was exactly what I was feeling, but it was very scary -- knew I hadn't felt all that terrible getting out of bed, but knew I needed to get back to bed, somehow I stumbled out of the bathroom and into the living room, called my girlfriend's name and she got up and she says she just helped walk me back to the bed, but I'm pretty sure there was a second or two that I blacked out, because I remember grabbing onto a chair and calling her name, and then I remember being back on the bed, but I have no memory of getting there.  I was dazed for about thirty seconds, but then felt reasonably steady again, and was able to get up and take some Robitussin before going back to sleep.

So that pretty much freaked me out and convinced me I had the plague and was clearly not equipped to fight whatever was going on in my body.  Went to the doctor yesterday, he told me it's a run-of-the-mill upper respiratory infection, gave me an antibiotic, and he said the passing out thing was something called Micturition Syncope, where it's not completely uncommon for men to pass out after urinating, if they've been standing up to urinate, because of the change in blood pressure.  And that the infection and fever made this not unusual.

I'm feeling a lot better today -- still coughing, but fever pretty much gone and I feel like a human being for the first time since Monday, and expect by Sunday or Monday I'll be back to normal -- but, seriously, the passing out or almost passing out thing -- the scariest thing I've ever experienced, and it's totally bizarre to me that this is a real and benign thing that can just happen.  "Yeah, I was peeing and next thing I know, I passed out."  Google tells me it's responsible for as many as 9% of all fainting episodes, and especially happens when guys are intoxicated (and, hence, dehydrated).  Maybe I've just lived a medically sheltered and healthy life (thank goodness) but I was seriously, seriously frightened.

And then I e-mailed a friend about it yesterday, and he was like, "yeah, I think a similar thing happened to me once a couple years ago. Like I woke up, and I think it was after urinating, I just felt like I was passing out."  Like it's a normal thing?  What other mysterious bizarre things do our bodies do that we're not told about??

Okay, boring story over.  Back to sleep.  This might be the last day of the writer strike!  Yay!

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).