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So far throughout my pre-med years I've been able to dissect multiple different animals, watch surgical videos, stitch up practice skin, and go to a cadaver lab and see and touch partially dissected humans. I was in a four-year pre-med program where we learned about different diseases and how they affect the body (and watched gory videos about symptoms). Never, not once, did I ever feel faint. I've been made excited about the possibilities of medicine and have felt joy and passion like nothing else.
So last week I had my first shadowing experience as part of a program my college offers pre-med students (I'm a sophomore btw). I'm with a family medicine resident, and the first two patients are well-child exams and everything is cool. Third patient is an older lady who was coming in for a post-surgery checkup because she had some internal bleeding after a car accident. Now, the doctor is explaining this to me (how the patient had first come in and was super pale, hemoglobin was low, etc), so the patient was sent to the hospital, and as the doctor is explaining this I started to feel super super faint. We were sitting down too but idk I just felt myself go dizzy. I excused myself real quick, sat down in the bathroom and put my head in between my legs, and splashed some water on my face and was back to normal in a few minutes. We go into the exam room and I'm standing and just started thinking about it again and nearly passed out while standing there. I excused myself again and told one of the nurses I had food poisoning and left. I sent the doctor an email with the food poisoning excuse and apologized, and she got back to me saying that it was no big deal. Now next week I'm shadowing a different doctor (still family medicine) and I'm scared something like that will happen again. How is it that I can see blood and gore and be fine, but feel faint when hearing a simple patient history? How should I overcome it and prevent it from happening again?
Thank you for anyone's help in advance
It surprises everyone how one's body reacts, especially your own. So I wouldn't lie about getting sick again. You might want to talk confidentially to that other physician or any other physician about how they or others they know learned to handle that.