Vasovagal syncope

A little over a year ago I had my eyes checked for the first time since I was a child. I knew I would need glasses — I'd had trouble reading the whiteboard in the last couple of years at school and in lectures at university.

Last week, I went for an eye test. My right eye hasn't changed, my left eye is 0.25 diopters better. I asked about having contact lenses, had the appropriate examination, and organised another appointment as the appropriate lenses weren't in stock.

Today, I went to have the lenses fitted. This didn't go very well. The optician tried to put a lens in my eye, but with no success. I kept flinching and closing my eye. After about four tries, she tried the other eye. Then I told her I was feeling a bit faint. She said I looked pale, and suggested I went back to the waiting area and tried again in 10 minutes. I went to the waiting area, sat down, then woke up from my dream (which was something familiar, but I can't recall it) and wondered why it was so bright, why I wasn't at home in bed, and who all these people were. It seems I fainted, and was "out for 2 seconds" to "20 seconds", depending on the opinion of the onlooker.

Someone waiting for an eye test was (I think) a nurse, and she said I should urgently go to hospital. One of the optician's staff called for an ambulance, but forgot the "urgent" bit — in fact, he told them I was probably fine. For some reason, this meant the despatched ambulance was "code green", which meant it wasn't using lights or sirens, and took 60 minutes to get through the London traffic. Now, I can understand not wanting to cause unnecessary disruption and endanger other road users, so for low-risk call outs when driving along fast-flowing roads or late at night lights and sirens might not be appropriate. Surely, though, it is entirely appropriate to use them to barge through standing traffic on blocked roads when it would save 75% of the journey time. Accepting an average speed of 4 mph (6 km/h) is ridiculous, especially when relying on a non-professional's opinion of the patient's risk.

Anyway, the paramedics didn't seem to concerned about me, which was reassuring. They drove me to the nearest hospital, which took another 40 minutes for a trip I regularly make by bicycle in less than 10. At this point I felt very cold and had an awful headache. The hospital was very busy. I was left to wait. For about an hour I could see they had much more severely injured people to treat, but by the time they saw me I was pretty fed up, and very hungry. Seeing "CRIT" in red next to my name on the doctor's screen didn't help my mood. In total, I was in the hospital for 3½ hours. Finally, I was seen by a doctor who said I didn't have much to worry about, and that the fainting was probably triggered by the lens touching my eye. A bit of searching on the Internet suggests that this is a fairly unusual thing to happen, but not unheard of; I'm surprised the optician hadn't experienced it before.

I think I'll stick with glasses.