Passing out on the BART train

I love to read. I read on the BART train going to and from work. It passes my time and puts me to sleep. Reading, generally, is very good.

I think I'm a tough cookie when it comes to things, but as I get older, I'm slowly realizing that my tolerance for two things is fading:

1. Animals who are hurt, dying or abused, and

2. Descriptive stories about medical things

After losing my baby, Oreo, and seeing her struggle with her stroke, I can't watch any animal in pain, read or hear about animal abuse, or watch those wild life shows where animals attack each other and die. I get the same feeling in my chest as I did when I found my Oreo paralyzed in our bathroom. It's a fluttery, very bad feeling that just needs to flutter away until it's gone. I hate that feeling. I can't watch too much of the animal planet channel, or I'll feel like I'm going to pass out or cry. I usually end up crying and then I quickly get yelled at by my husband for watching the channel. I just never learn.

The medical thing used to happen mainly when women would write about pregnancy or childbirth. Both situations gross me out, although I am getting better. Anything that has to do with bodily functions that secrete juices grosses me out. I don't know why. During my wonderful and very informative sex ed class in jr. college, we had to watch these weird Scandinavian sex ed films that pretty much showed everything and could be considered on the verge of porn, but if you have some narrator spouting off about the intricacies of the human body and how wonderful it is, then I guess it's okay. Well, we had a choice. Either watch it or don't.

I watched them and almost threw up every single time.

The way I get around actually throwing up or passing out (to me, the feeling that happens to me can mean either reaction) is by taking deep breaths and looking away. So, there I was, watching two people having sex on a rotating table thing, and every so often looking away and taking deep breaths. Yes. That's me. Green to the gills and acting like a pervert. You don’t know how many times I wanted to leave, but that’s almost just as embarrassing.

So how does this relate to BART? I’ve had on several occasions read books by women that describe their childbirth experiences. What happens to me on BART is that I start feeling claustrophobic and my stomach begins to flip-flop. Right after that, I start yawning – which I’m assuming is my body’s way of trying to get oxygen. I read a sentence, start to feel ill, yawn, look out the window, and then read another sentence. Mentally, I know this is retarded. How can reading about something I’ve never gone through make me react this way? Why does childbirth particularly affect me? I really don’t know. All I know is that sometimes it can take me up to a half an hour to get through one page of descriptive writing.

So this week, I’m reading Augusten Burrough’s Magical Thinking. This is the first book I’ve read by him, and I bought his books based on a recommendation because of other authors I love. His stories are funny, interesting and I can relate to some of what he writes about (mostly those things having to do with other people – he too wishes certain people to be ran over by a wheel of a garbage truck). Pretty harmless stuff.

On Tuesday, I was reading a chapter entitled “Roof Work.” At first it was just interesting – he was describing how he felt a bubble on the roof of his mouth. Then he went on to write about popping said bubble and then the next day discovering a hole there. And there the hole remained. So off to the dentist he went, and his dentist quickly sent him to the specialist down the hall. I think I started getting ill when he realized there was a hole in the roof of his mouth. I was doing a lot of staring out the window, yawning and mentally pepping myself up to not pass-out in the car.

When he goes to the specialist, I almost lost it. And, of course, by then a man (yes – note – a MAN) sat down next to me. I was basically trapped at this point. I had thoughts of getting off the train and getting some fresh air to make myself feel better, but I didn’t want to risk sitting in an aisle seat or standing (I was in the middle of my commute by then). So I just told myself to not think about what he was writing about – over and over, and of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And instead of seeming like a weirdo who was fidgeting and yawning and looking out the window, I tried to force myself to continue to read the story.

I probably got two more paragraphs in before I gave up and closed my eyes and tried to think of other things. I literally felt waves of panic and claustrophobia and nausea wash over me.

I bet you’re dying to know why I felt this way, and I feel like I shouldn’t even write about it because you may think I’m a wimp (and, admittedly, I am) or that I’ve ruined the book for you because you were about to run out and buy it to see if you’d get ill too.

Ah well, I don’t keep secrets well, so I’ll tell.

The specialist tells the author (true story as it was) that he has a congenital defect that if it was fully developed as a child, would have caused one nasty hair lip. Instead, it just waited until he hit his thirties to cause his palate to shift. The shifting caused the hole and the skin bubbled. Not a big deal, right? The specialist suggested that he clean out the hole now and get the author all fixed up so that it wouldn’t get infected. The author agreed. The specialist left and came back with one of those nasty looking dental needles and shot-up his mouth with enough Novocain to make his whole mouth and lower jaw go numb.

Then the specialist sliced the roof of his mouth open in the front, so that a flap was hanging down. He did is fancy cleaning job, placed the flap back and stitched the flap so that the stitches were wrapped around his front teeth. Black stitches nonetheless.

I write about this now, and funny enough, it doesn’t make me ill. Although it does remind me about the time I had a “chalazian” that looked a lot like a sty, but I was told it wasn’t, removed. The eye doctor shot Novocain in the inside of my lower eyelid and scrapped out my lovely chalazian. The sound of it was like balloons being chewed on. And while I didn’t feel any pain at the time, I could pretty much tell what he was doing and, well, I almost passed out then. Sometimes you just don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.

Long story short, I didn’t pass-out on the train (phew!), but I couldn’t read anymore, and I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I kept envisioning walking out of the BART station and the cold breeze on my sick little face and that made me feel so much better.

Now you want to hear about my wrist lumpectomy?