Gone with the Wind-style swooning: not particularly feminine, seriously lame

Some of you may know about my little fainting episode back in May, where I had the good luck to run into an acquaintance at a bus stop moments before saying "Wow, I really don't feel very good" and collapsing into his conveniently waiting arms. Following that incident, the first of its kind in my 27 years of existence, PC ran a full battery of tests (EKG, ultrasound of internal organs, fasting blood sugar test, anemia test, etc.) that seemed slightly overkill but I agreed to since the medical care was free and I figured better safe than sorry. Everything came back showing that I'm in great health, and it was decided that it was just a fluke, and that was that.

Then two days after returning to the US I was sitting outside at my mom's house chatting with her when I suddenly began to feel sick to my stomach. Not wanting to spew my dinner all over her back patio I stood up and said, "ooh, I'm not feeling very good" and walked into the house, where I started taking off my sandals (Moldovan habits are sticking with me). The next thing I knew I was thinking, Man, what was all that thudding? The thudding, it turned out, was me whacking into furniture on my way down to the kitchen floor, where I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at the underside of the kitchen table, which I'd been lucky enough to miss during my descent. I had just mentioned my May episode to my mom and her husband maybe 20 minutes earlier -- I didn't tell her while I was abroad because I didn't want to needlessly freak her out, since we'd decided it was nothing -- which was a good thing because she said if she hadn't have known she would have called an ambulance. I stood up, felt fine, hadn't hurt myself at all, and spent the rest of the evening lounging around with my feet up watching The Office and eating peanut butter m&ms.

Then the day before yesterday, noting my brother's and my lethargy and boredom, I suggested a late night bike ride. We rode all through town, down to the Columbia river, and back home again. It's hard to explain just how wonderful the air in this area smells -- it's more than just clean, it smells like flowers and fruit and the river and all of the things that are good about this part of the northwest. The giant gnat clouds we couldn't avoid biking through were a bit of a downer (gnats in my nose and eyes, which I had to fish out back home) but otherwise it was a great ride and as I'd hoped it really gave me energy and motivation that I'd been lacking pretty much since I arrived in the US. Jeremy enjoyed it too so we decided to make a date for the same ride the next morning.

We headed out at 11am, a nice little jaunt before my stepdad would take us into Portland, where we'd hang out for a few hours before joining my dad to pick up my sister at the airport. We took the same route as the night before, heading down through the industrial area by the Columbia river, and I was shouting back at Jeremy that we should take a left at a particular street to turn around and head home, when I steered my front tire right into an old train track. My body moved to turn left, my bike and the train track headed strait, and I soon found myself flying pavement-ward chin first. The whole thing was in agonizing slow motion, me thinking "not the face, don't hit the ground with your face, oh shit I'm skidding along the ground on my chest and my face" until I came to a stop a few feet from my bike. Jeremy, in typical teenage boy/younger brother fashion found the whole thing hilarious, and stood a few feet away as I sat up in the gravel cursing my bad luck and thinking about how I was going to go dancing with my sister this weekend with my chin skinned off.

Well, if you're going to use the pavement as a slip-n-slide I really must recommend doing so in a friendly place like my hometown, since soon after my crash several drivers stopped to offer me band-aids, rides home, and water. I had just asked for a ride back to my mom's place and was standing at the roadside lamenting my bad luck when suddenly I felt sick to my stomach and my vision started getting a bit like a television with a bad signal. "Hey Jeremy," I said, "I'm feeling kinda faint, will you come over here so I can lean on you?" Well, I think I failed to convey the urgency of this request, and my brother is a pretty mellow kid, so as he headed over at his typical moseying speed, I unceremoniously did a faceplant on the street. I came to a moment later, sitting on the ground, now sporting not only a goatee-like scab on my chin but also a rather impressive goose egg on my left eyebrow, and had the excellent judgment to stand up, at which point I fainted again. Now, my brother is a rather strapping 17 year old and over 6 feet tall, but he apparently didn't get much of a hold on me, and when I went fully unconscious I turned to 140 pounds of dead weight...which he lost his hold on, sending my head backwards to whack into the ground. The woman who had been standing there trying to assist me was not pleased -- "I can't believe you let her fall!"

Much like my Moldovan fainting episode, I was out longer this time, and my mind began dreaming. The whole thing was very peaceful, and for all I knew I could have been at home sleeping in my bed, until I opened my eyes and remembered that I had crashed my bike, was sitting in the gravel, had whacked my face into the ground and there were a whole lot of emergency personnel arriving. Bloody hell. This was really going to screw up my plans for the day.

I spent the next 10 minutes or so laying on the ground with people holding my head still in case I had head injuries, getting a well-deserved chastising for not having a helmet on and having a friendly argument with the EMTs because I wouldn't let them take me to the hospital. (I always wore a helmet in the past, I swear! I just didn't have one at my mom's house.) "Listen," I told them,"this may sound really lame but there is no way I'm paying the ambulance and emergency room fees. I'm broke and this is not what I'm going to spend my money on. I'll make an appointment from my home." They were not pleased, but I signed a paper saying it wasn't their fault that I'm too cheap and my stepdad arrived soon after to take me home. Everyone that worked on me was really nice and I was probably the most chipper bashed-up person they'd ever dealt with. I never did cry, since other than the stinging from all my bits that were missing skin nothing really hurt that bad, plus I find it a lot easier to deal with things through humor.

Now, though, I have to admit I'm more than a little freaked out. I still refuse to get all emotional about this, but my parents are scared and considering all the tests I had back in May I just keep hoping it is something benign/fixable causing these problems. I don't like feeling like an invalid and I don't want this issue, whatever it is, to negatively affect my plans for the future. I mean, even thinking about something like hiking with friends is now making me nervous because most of my favorite northwest hikes involve very high elevations and narrow trails, and I don't feel like fainting and then falling to my death. Lame, lame, lame. Also I'm having a hell of a time getting a hold of PC Washington, who I need to authorize my medical care (read: pay for it) since this is a condition that arose during my service. Otherwise I'm looking at a $250 deductible, and the little money I have needs to go toward moving to Philadelphia for grad school and a lot of other expenses.

So, this is all very frustrating, as if returning to the US after two years away wasn't already overwhelming enough, and then on a purely vain level I'm not looking forward to posing for pictures at my welcome home party this Saturday looking like I got into a bar fight. Though luckily my red chin thing can be mostly hidden with a careful tip of the head.

Boo.