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I've just got halfway down the resting heart rate thread and had to click off as it was making me feel all funny. I can't watch casualty, the sight of even fake insides turns me green.
Some things I'm okay with - like, for example, a tattoo needle, I think as it doesn't break the skin, the barrier between blood and the outside world. But having a blood sample taken - I need to lie down for 15 minutes after to recompose.
Is this a genetic thing - I'm pre-disposed to being a wuss? Or is this a learned response, maybe from seeing my brother slice his thumb open on a tin can as a child?
Have you seen the amount of blood that leaks out when tattooing?
No!
I am no longer fine with tattoo needles.
You're far from alone. Mrs mW deals with hand and upper limb rehab and has a fainter at least 3 times a week and a lot more that feel a bit funny. From what she tells me neither the severity of the injury nor the burliness of the individual necessarily correlate to the likelihood of queasiness. She has had some right big lumps of fellas faint at the sight of really quite minor injuries.
The only other thing that I find interesting is that it rarely seems to happen with kids which does make me guess that it might be a learnt response.
Personally I can watch most things but knives cutting into flesh do make me feel a bit out of sorts, even if its on a film and I know it's fake I still have the same reaction. Cut the head off with a chainsaw and I'm fine. Slowly slice through skin and I'm hiding behind the sofa.
Over-active imagination?
Weird isn’t it? I’m needle phobic. When my wife was pregnant she had to give a blood sample and the nurse took me out of the room as she thought I was about to drop.
Since then my daughter has developed Type 1 Diabetes so I have to administer up to 5 injections a day which I am fine with, but I can’t watch anyone else do it and the sight of a needle on TV makes my heart race.
May be to do with your traumatic childhood experience, I had a similair thing with creepy crawlies.
When we were younger me n my brother shared a bedroom, one night he jumped out of bed screaming his head off and it turns out a moth had been trying to crawl into his ear! it was a big bugger n all, its body was about the thickness and length of my little finger. Now i hate all manner of flying creepy crawlies, devils spawn that they are.
Back on topic and to be fair, I'm not too arsed about my own blood, but it can get a bit wierd seeing other peoples blood, think thats more to do wi being subconciously sympathetic to their pain. I'm a deep and tortured soul.
It's an interesting one isn't it.
I for one go iffy when having MY blood taken, but can take other people's blood all day ong. Also I'm happy to be performing certain procedures myself, but at other times I'll come over feint [b]even though[/b] I'm interested, enjoying the procedure, and "don't want to avoid it" if you see what I mean (i.e. I'm not all squeamish and 'scared', but at times my body simply thinks the brain should shut down!!)
DrP
Yeah, even if I'd wanted to be a medical professional it was never going to happen!
wot DrP said
my Mrs will happily spend her time up to the elbows in somebody else's guts but she's fainted when cutting her own finger loads of times
The only thing I don't like is stuff giving birth. Always have to look away when they show birth scenes on wildlife documetaries etc. I was a forceps baby, so maybe that's why!
Absolutely fine with anything else 🙂
Learned!
I blame my mother for my squeamishness.
I have over the past 10 or so years "un-learned" most of it. Mainly through a severe broken wrist requiring external fixator, and just "getting on with it", along with a few ops like tennis elbow surgery via local anaesthetic etc. Most things don't bother me now, unless I over think about it.
I remember when my son was about 8yo, I took him to the dentist to have some teeth out. I had to be helped out of the waiting room and into the fresh air. He just stood and watched, and walked proudly into the surgery!
Strange thing is that when I have to insert a needle/cannula into someone, a remarkably high percentage of the 'total wooses' are tattoo'ed.
I wonder if it's due to their experience that tattoos are painful and they are looking at a much bigger needle? It [b]would[/b] suggest it's a learned response.
It took me three attempts to get through the first aid and defib course at work due to either fainting or ducking out due to feeling wonky. The first time the person giving the course thought I was a plant... 🙂
I've always been a bit of a wimp, but could get thorugh most situations, however the birth of our second Daughter 18 months ago has ****ed with my mind to the point that I cannot watch anything on the TV to do with childbirth, and really don't like talking about it.
Basically - my wife suffered a ruptured uterus during delivery, which caused our daughter to fall our of the womb inside her mother.. the gorefest that followed involved my daughter being repeatedly resuscitated and my better half having 200 stiches to put her back together.. while all this was going on I was sat on a plastic chair outside the O.R. utterly convinced that they had both died...
Medical professional here too..deal with foot ulcers for most of the week, no problems. Had to leave a leg ulcer clinic in a hurry as i had to chuck.... Can stand most things but not that. No way.
Just googled leg ulcers. Grim.
Mmmmm leg ulcers..............the pics are one thing, the smell is quite another 😡
getting worse as i get older. I used to love gory horror films, now i shut my eyes watching sports injuries happen etc. I'm a paramedic, so "real" blood/guts/faeces doesn't bother me, but pictures of dislocations or imagining the feeling of walking on an open tib/fib fracture (as i saw recently) makes me feel all funny!
I used to work with a guy who, and I swear this is true, fainted if he thought about fainting.
How we discovered this is, we were discussing fainting one day, about ten minutes later *boom* down he went. Walking along and just went from horizontal to vertical like a free being felled, faceplanted the carpet, smashed his nose.
Shouldn't laugh.
You're all big girls blouses. Try dressing hindquarter amputations, or picking pieces of windscreen out of peoples eyes, or eating hospital canteen boiled hamburgers...
Oh god, eyes too. Reading that just made me flinch. I can't watch people put contacts in
Seeing people throw up, even on TV, makes me queasy. Charlie Brooker (the mad ugly TV critic who somehow managed to enchant Konnie Huq) has a real spew-phobia.
oh Jesus - not the hamburgers 😯