PASSED OUT

A NEW LEARNING
Guess how vulnerable I feel.
Not a classy move.
I woke up, gradually, with some neck pain; face down on the bathroom floor. Christine trying to get my attention.
Four in the morning. Customary nightly pit-stop but something went wrong. Some synapses misfired.

I can recall walking rather thick-headed from bed to bathroom, thinking some muddled thoughts and sitting down on the throne. Now as I contemplate, maybe I fell asleep. Perhaps I just dozily tumbled over on the floor and cracked my noggin. Actually writing this episode is therapeutic because I have been somewhat paranoid about this event. It rendered me fearful.

Four summers ago I suffered a grand mal seizure, unconsciously convulsing on the kitchen floor. Christine witnessed this and called 911 and the rapid response team of paramedics arrived in force I have been told, subdued me with a tranquillizer and whisked me away to the hospital where I gained consciousness three hours later. Fifteen minutes of violent physical thrashing left me with two weeks of muscle pain. Beyond that however, I spent the next four months with driving privileges withdrawn, going through most medical examinations known to medicine. All serious causes were eliminated and the seizure was termed an anomaly. It was acknowledged that blood sugar imbalance might have caused this. So life resumed, cautiously, always with a remote fear of a recurrence. Then this.

Well there is no resemblance between the two situations. Nonetheless, to wake up face down and pajamas down as well, is disturbing at the least and concerning, certainly. But as I say, writing about it has been good for me because I have been unnecessarily anxious that I am vulnerable, when in all likelihood I was simply not awake enough to assume the throne position. I hate to think where my head may have ended up had I been standing upright at that appliance.

I can’t blame anyone. I am my own pain in the neck.