Wow, that sounds really scary Joyce! So far that is one of the fun things I have managed to avoid, but I think I know how you felt because I did go through something fairly similar last year. I wrote about it here when it happened--I'm talking about the time when I was playing poker last year and, out of the blue, started feeling funny and, within five minutes, I had passed out. Like you say, it was something totally new and totally foreign when compared to anything else that had ever happened to me, and that's what made it so incredibly scary. As the room started to fade away from me and people started to sound far away as a kind of white veil started to descend over my vision, I still distinctly remember saying to myself, "So, this is what it feels like to die . . . " At the time, I did not feel like I was overexaggerating at all because it was just absolutely terrifying, seeing as I'd never passed out at any other point in my life. Why wouldn't I think I was dying in that case?
So no, I haven't had the rapid increase in blood pressure you experienced, but I do think I understand how scary it must have been. Not only that, I can also imagine how you now think, "Great, one more medical thing for me to worry about!", because that's sure what I thought at the time of my incident. Here's hoping both of our bizarre circumstances were one-timers, Joyce!
Brad
