You've heard of Situational Awareness, My Stomach has Situational Nausea!

So, maybe white men can’t jump, but they sure can get nauseated and almost pass out. How do I know this, well, I am one of them. “Hi, my name is Jared and I have a weak stomach.”

Ok, not really weak, just situational weak. When my oldest daughter was born, I was in the delivery room with my wife the entire time. No, I didn’t pass out from the birth, I thought that was really cool, what I did almost pass out from was the 10” long needle that they stuck into my wife’s back to give her the good stuff that us guys never get to enjoy. The thought of a needle that long being shoved into a spine, snaking its way around the bones in an attempt to plant itself into a nerve just did me in. The rest of the day was great after recovering from this.

Well, after my daughter was born, I thought I wanted to know a little more about how to handle emergencies if anything were to happen to this precious little person. I enrolled myself in the next EMT course that was being taught. After my experience with the Epidural, I was nervous about what I would be learning and discussing in class. I did fine. The only problem I did have later was riding around in the back of the ambulance, I have a weak stomach for motion sickness as well.

Later my second and third child was born and I gladly removed myself from the delivery room during the time of the Epidural placement, all else was fine. Later I went through the Intermediate EMT course and learned to place I.V.’s and intubate patients and give drugs and I was fine, except for again riding in the back of the Ambulance.

So this brings me to yesterday. I have for several months had severe pain in my shoulder from a work injury. I have been dealing with it trying to get it figured out. Physical Therapy didn’t help, and so the doctor had scheduled an MRI for me and then due to the results an appointment with an Orthopedic Surgeon. This is where I landed yesterday, in the Surgeon’s office going over X-ray’s and the MRI images. Well, with my job I get the opportunity on many occasions to look at cuts, and abrasions, and fractures. I have seen people deceased, and body parts in the wrong places. None of this ever gets to me as with the work on the ambulance. However, sitting in the surgeons office yesterday and listening to the discussion about my own shoulder, and him showing me models and discussing what is going on……I lasted about 45 seconds before I was pale and ready to keel over. The doctor hadn’t even noticed my state of being, he was going about his discourse and trying to fill me with the knowledge of the situation that he wanted to share, when I finally had to cut him off. I told him I couldn’t take it anymore. He seemed kinda stunned. “Yeah Doc, I know I am a wonderful specimen of masculinity on the outside, but I live with 4 girls and my insides are not quite the same anymore.” I almost started to tell him that I thought I was even starting to grow boobs, but I couldn’t talk anymore or my stomach was going to end up on the floor. The doctor said that I should probably lie down. He then proceeded to humiliate me even more explaining that he was only going through his speech for my benefit and that if I couldn’t handle it he would stop. This, once again, made me feel really secure in my man hood. Next thing to top off this wonderful experience was the young new nurse came in to fill out some more paper work and when she saw me lying down, asked if I was tired. I told her no, just nauseous. She being the A student I’m sure she was in her class, jumped into action and quickly instructed me in the proper way to get blood flow back into my head. I followed along to appease her and create the helpless victim syndrome that they had immediately diagnosed me with.

What a great day. In the end I found out that I was going to need surgery on my shoulder, my recovery time for said surgery was a less than desirable number, and my stomach still can’t handle the thoughts of things going into bones. Guess I may as well just start the process of removing my name from the Man hood hall of records, if I could find it there in the first place.