My Father's Daughter

My mother has often mentioned that my father passed out at some point during the day she was in labor with me; she's tailored the story to suit her needs, but, at least one of the times she's told it, she reports that he fainted dead away at the moment I was delivered. Although I was arguably there for the event, my memory of it is nil, so I'll have to take her word for it.

While it was clear from the time I was a young girl that was never going to enter the practice of medicine -- I made it plain that I wanted to be, and planned on becoming, a lawyer from the time I was five -- I was never a particularly squeamish kid. Or adult. I have always been pretty calm under fire, and don't start shaking or contemplating the awfulness of blood and guts until after a crisis has passed.

In an effort to raise my threshhold still further, in college I volunteered at several campus blood drives. What's more, I gave blood regularly myself. Amazingly, I never fainted. Didn't come close even once. In fact, female blood donors rarely had any trouble making it through a session. It was always the guys -- the big ones, six feet tall and muscle-bound -- who passed out during anything plausibly squicky.

Today, nearly two weeks after minor, outpatient foot surgery, I had an appointment to have my stitches removed. However low-risk, this was my first surgical procedure, save for a wisdom tooth extraction about five years back. It was the first one involving a hospital, an IV, and sedation. And I made it through that like a champ.

Because the work was done on my foot, I had to stay off it for the next ten or so days. This gave the stitches time to heal, without adding to the task of mending the additional burden of enduring the repetitive pressure from enduring my body weight as I walked. No biggie.

I also was forbidden to get the incision wet. So my foot had remained swaddled in several layers of gauze and topped by a bandage for nearly two weeks. Moreover, every time I showered, I had to wrap up my bandage in a gerry-rigged contraption involving a garbage bag and several bandaids. Not fun.

And yet, I got through it all without any major issues. Wouldn't you just know I'd grey out when it came time to get the stitches out?

I'm such a wus.

The nurse wasn't mean. She was just no-nonsense. But she started cutting through the ACE bandage, and I didn't know what my foot would look like. Then I saw the betadine-soaked fabric, and under it what looked like a huge bloody black and blue spot. It was actually magic marker on my foot, which I hadn't known would be there. But it looked like it was all gross and pus-filled and so on, and I got worried. From that point on, it was just some subconscious urge that took over. I felt queasy, then I started sweating and then I got simultaneously hot and clammy. I knew exactly what was happening, and felt silly about it. It's like crying involuntarily -- you don't feel worked up intellectually, but some primal urge takes the reins of your body and suddenly it's reacting. Kind of unnerving.

I suppose it could have been worse. It probably was barely a blip on the nurse's radar; I'm sure the event made more of an impact on me than on her. (Like so many other things -- we're always certain that everyone else has nothing better to do than stare incessantly at the pimples on the edge of our noses, and that, when we fart in class -- or at work -- not that I'd ever do such a thing, of course -- everyone knows it, judges us, and we're marked for life with a virtual scarlet "F," with any hopes of inclusion in the cool circle gone forever....) She fetched me a wet paper towel, fanned me, and in a matter of minutes (maybe less), the color had rushed back to my face and I was sheepishly laughing about it with my doctor, who examined me afterwards.

But still...I'd always prided myself on a certain visceral fortitude. I wonder what I can do to get that back. I don't want to be the girl who faints, or almost-faints, even if no one else cares.