Fainting 101

Some of you out there may have never, and will never experience fainting. Consider yourself extremely lucky. Others, comparatively, do it on a regular basis, and can’t be described with such words. Fainting is random and diverse, where one family might not even know what this is, there is another family that carries smelling salts in their purse and/or pocket at all times. It’s also genetic, so those that have it in their blood are more or less screwed.

Moving on.

This class is for everyone! Because lets face it, there’s nothing more traumatic then finding your wife in a chair, passed out, eyes open, and shaking. And…for no apparent reason.

So here are the Do and Do-Nots, for those of you not falling to the ground helpless.

Do not move them. Unless they are in a dangerous situation let them lay there until they come around. A dangerous situation would be when your five-year-old falls into a pile of stacked chairs. A not dangerous situation would be when your eight-year-old falls on to a pillow on the floor.

Do check their pulse. This is pretty much a given.

Do not take advantage of the situation and draw on them.

Do not do any of the following: shake them, kick them, hit them, put them in front of spaghetti, freak out, run into the hall screaming, and throw water on them.

Do keep a portable fainting couch with you at all times.

Do find them something to eat, and let them get out of school/work/piano lessons/church/whatever early.

Do not cover them with a blanket. Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not really harmful, but it also isn’t helpful, and we’d rather have you by our side when we come to, then off searching.

Do elevate our feets. Get that blood back to our heads.

Do be courteous. If the fainter has fallen on to you, don’t push them off. Or if you see them falling, catch them!

Do not laugh. Fainting is like dying, we no longer have control over ourselves, things happen. It’s also terrifying, when they wake up some will want to cry, let them.

Now those that know my family know that we have a history of fainting. We’ve got the genetic variety, passed on by my uncles (thanks). Three of the five kids in my family faint on a more regular basis. Two of us average once a year from before we can remember. You can say we’ve learned a few things:

The ground, be it covered in carpet, grasses, a rug, or tile, is hard. And it hurts.

Putting your head between your knees doesn’t always cut it. A) You can still fall, and B) it’s sometimes too late. Just drop to the floor if you can, it saves on bumps and bruises.

Putting your head on your desk/table never works. It’s not far enough down. Upside though: the person in the next desk is softer then the floor.

When you find out one of your triggers commit it to memory instantly and avoid it like the plague. Even if you’re considered freakish or un-cool, or you have to interrupt somebody in their heroic tale of how they saved Christmas.

Known triggers: Stress, blood, needles, piano lessons, pulling teeth, talk about knee operations, talk about any operations. Gross injuries on anyone in a 5-mile radius, gross injury on yourself 100% effective. Gruesome pictures, gruesome anything really. Lack of food, earring being ripped out of ear, intense temperature changes, passing the sacrament, knee locking, riding on the swings at Lagoon for the first time, Primary, Killer Bee documentary. Um… I think that’s it.

Lying down in a lazy boy, couch, doctors chair, while comfy, doesn’t stop it.

Lying down at all is still no guarantee.

Let those who it will concern know about the tendency. Especially if you faint with your eyes wide open and you shake.

When in doubt, don’t. Or if unavoidable tell the person in charge or any person really that the likelihood of you passing out is mid-to-high and they should take precautions. This will either lower the "unavoidable" scale to "probably avoidable" or said person will gird loins and be ready with the fainting couch and smelling salts.

Smelling salts are an unknown quantity, I’ve never had them used on me, or anyone I know, I haven’t a clue if they work. You can test it if you want, I sure as the dark underworld am not.

If I’ve missed anything please let me know. This is just from my experiences as well as my families. It’s a constant fear of ours that we will faint. However we have learned tricks and things to stop it when we can, and have thus slowed the instances. Allysen and I faint the most by far, Jacob has done it often enough though. The other two siblings haven’t to my knowledge. A year or so back we got a new member to our club. My cousin Abbie has joined the fainting ranks, I’m sorry Abbie, I was hoping it missed you guys. Granted it was your dad that shared the gene, so I suppose it was inevitable.

I actually want one of these.