A Fainting

For the first time in thirty years I almost fainted last night.  Watching a program about a young girl receiving chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to repair her immune system.  Me, who has assisted in  many surgeries, seen blood and guts and protruding bone, eyeballs and viscera.  I didn't even know how it was affecting me until I felt a little strange and thought I'd get up, go to the loo, brush my teeth and go to bed.  By the time I'd got to the laundry room I was on my way out and took the downward dog position in an effort to get blood to my head.  Not good enough so I went and lay down on the cool wooden kitchen floor. 

It took time but of course I recovered.  What surprises me is that it happened at all.  I've fainted while watching Bob Fosse's heart attack scene  in a movie made about his life, during the simulated abortion scene in the movie The Other Side of Midnight, almost fainted when reading an article about woman's trouble in the Readers Digest and many times during visits to doctor's offices for shots and examinations (which is why I don't go anymore.  Much easier to stay healthy rather than undergo that particular form of torture).  I'm 55 years old and still fall victim. 

Fainting or almost fainting is the most horrible sensation.  My vision starts to fade, my body gets hot, the world goes black and when I wake up I still feel wobbly and unwell but have an overpowering urge to get to the toilet.  I suspect it's the body readying itself for flight by flushing out the bowel but wonder at the same time that if I'm getting ready for flight why am I on the ground weak as a kitten?  Read some files on syncope and the theory is that it is the body's way of averting danger by playing possum. 

Was so relieved to get into bed.  Thought sleep would come easily.  My face, while brushing my teeth, was still pale and greasy looking.  The bed felt wonderful.  Gave myself up to gravity and the scent of clean sheets.  But sleep would not come and when it did it was restless.  Dreamed several dreams.  One of which was of aliens.  In the sky was a lopsided pentagram streaked like tortoiseshell.  It was supposed to be a weather anomaly but at some signal it began moving.  We were being invaded!  Don't remember beyond that.  Another dream had to do with Karla and work and a third was about a horse, perhaps Balthazar.  Was going to ride him but was concerned about his discomfort with having a weight on his back.  Found a hornets nest beneath the saddle flap.  That's a pretty clear message.

This last dream portion is tied in with a partial story I caught on Horsetalk TV about a Russian trainer called Alexander Nevzorov.  He is totally against horse sports as cruel, no exceptions, has a  petition on his website calling for their ban, which I signed, yet manages to train his horses to do extraordinary things with nothing more than a string tied around their neck.  He doesn't believe in bits, bitless bridles or halters.  I was enthralled.  I, who have taken the whip to my horses in an effort to make them comply with my wishes.  Always forgiving horses who greet me the next day as if nothing had happened.  Their greatness of spirit is humbling.  I am very ashamed of the way I have behaved.   Especially as always I have known in my heart he is right.  Even as I beat them, I knew how wrong I was to do so.  It shames me to write these words.  But shame is a pointed prod to change.  I now cry when poddy calves are ridden by children at rodeos, I don't watch horseracing on television, I always think of the animal that has given its life to make some kind of burger for the big chains, an animal that hadn't much of a life while it was alive, I think of the animals that died during the tsunami, during the battles in the Middle East, those that were frightened, who lost their homes or their people.  I'm a different person in many ways to that person who raised a whip in anger and frustration.  Not altogether different but trying to be totally different.