Fainting Laura, Fainting Goats

So something that a lot of people don't know about me is that I faint... a lot. It's not really abnormal for me.

I was only six or seven years old the first time I fainted. It was because I was trying to jump up on the counter to sit and I hit my head on an open cupboard. It hurt. I fainted.

That's become a frequent occurrence in my life. Pain makes me faint. So does low blood sugar. So does blood rushing to my head. So do a lot of other random things.

Last night I fainted... really out of nowhere. I'm not sure what brought it on, but I could feel the rush and fuzziness in my head, much like a rapid, deep injection of anesthesia. I immediately crouched down in a ball place my head down, resting on my arms and let it pass. I was home alone so I don't know exactly how long I laid alone on my living room floor in the fetal position, but I would guess only a few minutes.

It was a very deep fainting incident and my head was woozy enough that I had to go immediately to bed. Needless to say, I fell asleep quickly and slept deeply for a solid nine hours. Maybe my body was telling me it is time to sleep.

When I got to work today, I told the story to my friend Jenni, who has heard of my fainting tales before. Jenni even got a visual aid of how I curled up last night to protect myself from the inevitable, which led another co-worker to come up behind us and say "What are you doing?!?!" We all laughed and I explained my visual aid.

Jenni, the mother of three, responded to today's story by saying, "How are on earth are you going to have kids?" My answer was simply, "Drugs. Lots of drugs."

After I told Jenni how I fainted again last night, she said she was going to start calling me a Fainting Goat. I hadn't known goats were known for fainting, but, of course, I was able to find a fun video of it to share from YouTube.



While I'm at it, I have a few funny stories to go along with my fainting.

The Fishing Boat Incident

I fainted on a fishing boat in the middle of the lake once (with my head between my legs, not sprawled across the boat or anything). I had caught a rusty fishing hook in my hand after jerking to hard on the line and saw a bit of blood and panicked. My mom got so wound up trying to save me (I was probably between 10 and 12 at the time), she almost knocked the boat over. We went to town and I got a tetanus shot and as fine.

The Postman and the Ambulance

Once, in college, I fainted from the blood rushing to my head while I got up from a nap. I was woken up suddenly from a knock at the door. It was the mailman with a package I needed to sign for my roommate. I could feel myself getting dizzy from the blood rushing to my head, but tried to force myself to sign for the package.

It didn't work. I fell straight backward and hit my head on the kitchen floor, breaking a wooden barrette that was holding my hair back, which led to a bit of bleeding from the back of my head (very minor we found out.)

The mailman came in, called 911 and some other girls who lived in my apartment revived me. We called one of my roommates, who was across the street at her boyfriends, and then my other roommate came in and said, "What the hell happened to you?"

We ended up having paramedics come, who because I was dizzy and had a cut on my head all thought it was best to bring me to the hospital. So I had my one and only ambulance ride. Meghann (my roommate) rode in the front of the ambulance, Melissa (my other roommate) drove behind us so we could have a ride home. I was in the back with cute paramedics and oxygen. I was, quite honestly, happy as a lark (minus feeling like a complete dope.)

The best part of the story is that when Meghann called my dad to tell him what happened, all he said was, "Oh, that's Laura for you!"