Aftermath of a fall (continued...)

With a slightly hurting right bum, but after a good lunch, I didn’t join my female companions for their afternoon stroll, but choose instead to do some “housecleaning” on my computer. 

For more than 10 years now, I use a standing desk and unusually, this time, had to alternate frequent breaks and bursts of pain between standing and sitting in my office chair, to the point that I grew badly nauseated and became immobile and totally disabled. 

When my wife and daughter returned I couldn’t talk any more and had no strength left, looking about to die. 

They called 911, the ambulance came, ran a quick EKG that perhaps left to be desired as to its accuracy and drove me to one of the main cardiology centers in Salt Lake City were I was admitted in their ICU. 

There, after spending the night and about 16 hours, following repeated testing imaging of all sorts, they couldn’t find any severe problem with my heart, except some calcification around my aortic valve that’s just a marker of old age. 

So after disentangling myself from all the wires they had put on me and following a night without sleep I returned home to enjoy the last day of the year, with the doctors best wish for a happy 2025, no direct intervention and no prescription! 

Since the doctors I saw at the ICU couldn’t figure out what had happened to me, I did some research back at home, I concluded that I had suffered a vasovagal response, which occurs when the vagus nerve is stimulated. It’s the vagus nerve that controls the heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and other bodily functions. 

When it's triggered, the heart slows and blood vessels dilate, which can cause blood to pool in the legs and deprive the brain of oxygen. This can lead to fainting, or vasovagal syncope which is what happened to me that day. To treat it the right way, I should have lied down and lifted my legs up in the air to restore blood flow to the brain and help them regain consciousness. 

These feelings of nausea weren’t new to me and are clearly like to an overly long standing posture at my desk, so next time, I’ll take a break, sit more often and stand a little bit less and life should go on nicely in 2025!