to not have realised how scary it is to see/try to help someone in a fainting spell

[DervlaGlass]

DH fainted this evening and it was like he just left his body and was slumped and wouldn't react to anything I said. His eyes were open and it was like he was just the body without the person. Took me ages to realise something was wrong as he was kind of propped against a wall so didn't just collapse (thank God keep thinking what if he hit his head)

I've never seen someone close to me faint and I'd always imagined it was just oh gosh fan them a bit then it's ok again but wasn't at all- his blood pressure plummeted and he took ages to be able to get up

I know it's not a big health deal in itself but he has a lot of underlying health conditions and now I feel scared to go to sleep in case he's not ok in the night

I know this isn't really an aibu except about my own ignorance but feeling a bit alone with this

If you think it's bad to witness , well it's just awful to experience !! I am a fainter and it's horrendous .
The feeling when you know it's going to happen yet you can't do anything .
Racing heart , sweating then feeling cold , feeling of being about to throw up , sometimes ringing in your ears / pins and needles and next I am on the ground !!! I recover consciousness immediately though.
I tend to remain shaky for the day .
Hope you all feel better soon . It's all quite dramatic really .
I have fainted twice on early morning EasyJet flights . Embarrassing .

I'm a fainter too and its an awful sensation.

Cold water on forehead and when the fainter comes around, try to run wrists under very cold water. I don't know why but it helps to stop the shaking.

Heat/standing up too quickly/tiredness/dehydration/too much sugar/too much salt and during heavy periods are all things that have caused me to faint. I fainted a lot on public transport when I was pregnant and standing up. The seats reserved for pregnant women are there for a reason

You’re right it can be quite scary. It happened to an elderly person I know whilst sat down and for a brief moment we thought they’d died.

Another fainter here. Once on a bus in Spain which was highly embarrassing. Another time I fainted by the side of a busy road. Not a single car driver stopped to help, despite the fact that I had two very little children with me at the time.
Fainting usually happens when I'm sick or if I get a sudden intense pain like twisting an ankle or falling. It's always deeply unpleasant. You know it's going to happen but you can't stop it.

What I've observed repeatedly is that if you faint (or fall) in public other people want to get you back up on your feet immediately - which is the worst thing to do as you need to get oxygen to your brain.

I used to be a fainter, started age 10 when the whole family had a stomach bug, woke up feeling ill, got up to tell my parents & fainted in their bedroom, then did it again 3 more times during the day. I once fainted on a school careers trip to the headquarters of a big bank, it was a hot day & I passed out as we were walking around their computer centre. Touch wood, I haven't done it for about 20 years.

I saw my mum have a heart related seizure 2 years ago, it only lasted less than 2 minutes but was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen, by the time she came around I had already been on the phone to 999 for a minute.

I've fainted a handful of times, and it's scary to be the fainter too!

But I'm a bit worried he doesn't remember it at all? Did he know something had happened when he came round or did he not realise he'd missed anything? Because that sounds more like an absence seizure.

Every time I've fainted I've felt sick, then wobbly, then my vision has gone black and white then gone completely blind, my legs have lost all strength and I've felt myself start to fall, then I've woken up maybe 30 seconds later lying on the ground.

I’ve fainted a lot over the years but I always got a few seconds notice , enough to know I was going but not enough to do something about it . One particularly memorable occasion when I was very pregnant I was out with my late mother , fainted and in her wisdom she decided to bring me round by tipping a bottle of lemonade over my head . I have very low BP which doesn’t help .

I fainted a few times when younger and still have spells of being light-headed. Mainly down to low blood pressure and standing up too quickly. I fainted once in a nightclub when out with a group of work colleagues. I think it was the heat and being dehydrated. I could feel myself going and everything feeling fuzzy and then going black. I could hear muffled voices before I list consciousness and recognised one of my work colleagues so slightly moved in that direction and then landed on them! I think everyone around me thought I was drunk but I wasn’t

Another time I got up too quickly but managed to walk into the kitchen before collapsing on my poor mum whilst she was ironing. She desperately tried to catch me, get the dog out of the way and not manage to burn anyone with the iron!

I always felt okay afterwards and didn’t think it was a big deal and so didn’t realise how scary it must be for someone else to watch me collapse.

It’s horrible! DS faints. And it’s really upsetting. But obviously I never show him that I’m upset!

Yes exactly this. Syncope without prodrome and while sitting needs investigation, especially with pre-existing renal issues where there may be medication which makes the BP slump.
definitely needs a trip to the GP and likely referral to TLOC clinic or whatever the equivalent is locally

Your right. From the description the OP gave it sounded like a simple faint and she confirmed that this was the case.
The majority of faints we see are either hypoglycaemia, patients not eating before treatment or through fear fight/flight type reaction.
We actually had a neighbour to the practice rush in yesterday asking for assistant. One of the dentists took off with the AED. Fortunately the neighbours wife was conscious when he arrived but was having a heart attack. He stayed with them until the paramedic arrived then came back. I was halfway through a treatment but would have joined him once I’d finished. We train as a team and the more hands available for CPR the better. I had already planned to join them with the oxygen and other resuss equipment. Thankfully it wasn’t needed. It’s the second time this month we’ve been called on to assist by a member of public.
With ambulance waiting times increasing it’s becoming a more common occurrence. All dental surgeries have defibrillators and oxygen. So if you are ever in need near an open dental surgery make use of it. GP surgeries also have them. They also usually come with members of staff who have been trained to use them although they are pretty straight forward mistakes can occur if you are not familiar with them.