In Order to Faint

My Father's Day was a little exciting. By a little, I mean a lot. By exciting, I mean more scary than exciting.

You see, I almost fainted. In church.

Yeah.

I'm usually pretty good about eating well, getting enough sleep (even if it's displaced to other times of the day via naps and aching joints), and I've dramatically increased my water consumption. Unfortunately, all of these efforts are sidelined when confronted by the powerful force of temperature.

Temperature and I haven't always gotten along. I blame both my parents for this. My mother actually is allergic to the cold. Seriously. Allergic. I'm not joking. My father becomes a human sloth in extreme heat. He literally stops functioning.

Guess what? Yeah.

I'm not allergic to the cold, but I do have pernio which leaves lovely blood blisters on my fingers and toes any time they're exposed to wet cold (cold being defined as in the 40s). As to the heat, yeah. I don't function well. Part of this may be due to not sweating.

Okay, I DO sweat. It does happen. It just doesn't happen like it does for most people. I never drip in sweat. A light sheen is about as much as I get (unless it's like 90% humid or something). So what happens when it gets really hot? I can't cool down. My blood vessels expand in an effort to remove excess heat, and my body neglects to coat my skin in water to help carry that heat away.

In other words, it's REALLY easy for me to overheat (Yes, I'm a lizard lady. I told you about that RH negative thing. It's totally true. Really.).

Well, add in a lack of sleep and a high sugar breakfast and then place me in a stuffy ridiculously hot sanctuary and you guessed it - I will keel over like nobody's business. Fortunately for me, I've fainted before (I mean, how could I not with my physiology?!) so I recognized the signs. I started sweating. I tried to drink more water. My skin got cold. My ears started to buzz. My vision started to tunnel. I felt nauseous. Apparently from across the room people could see me turn white as a sheet. Needless to say, we left. Christian and I ended up camping out on a couch in a sitting room for the remainder of the service until I was closer to a normal temperature. I drank more water. I breathed. The baby kicked letting me know s/he was alright (which at the time was very reassuring).

Now I know I can't go to church without my water bottle and my hair up. I also have to ask them to keep the fans on regardless or I literally can't go (at least I couldn't stay in worship). It seems backwards that church could physically endanger me, but there you have it. It can happen when you're a lizard lady who attends a church further inland in a place where the temperature is always 10-30 degrees higher than the coast in summer.

Throughout July and August, pray for me. I'll need it.

Time to drink some more water...