Head spinning, unclear vision, nausea. Blood phobia?
Patient: Hello Doc. Im a 20 year old male having a healthy lifestyle no major diseases. Yesterday a young cousin of mine got injured pretty badly. I was the one who cleaned his wounds and applied antiseptic lotion to them. I even checked closely whether the wounds needed stitches or not. Till that instant was completely OK. But when i was walking him up to the Doctors Clinic, suddenly my head and my stomach started spinning badly and my vision became extremely unclear. I almost vomited a couple times and felt that i was gonna faint but finally somehow managed to reach the clinic where i became better after lying down. Everyone says that Im suffering from Blood Phobia but that cant be right because when i was cleaning his wound and checking them, i didnt feel any bit uneasy or disgusted. And i myself have had bad history of injuries in my childhood when i easily used to watch the doctor stitch up my skin. So what was this nausea all about? Doctor: Hi and welcome to Healthcare Magic. Thanks for your question...Phobia is a type of anxiety disorder where there is excessive and irrational fear of something, leading to avoidance of that fearful stimulus / object. In your case, the appearance of your symptoms seem to be corelating with the incident of closely obseving blood / injury and so is likely to have been the cause of your nausea. But still, in order to technically qualify for a diagnosis of blood phobia, you need to have had persistent such aversion to blood / injury, along with avoidance of such situations (...which you say is absent). It could be that the straining of your eyes to closely observe / clean his wounds along with fatigue may have caused the nausea. However, if these symptoms keep repeating again in similar situations, then it is more likely that you have a phobia.Wish you all the best.- Dr. Jonas SundarakumarConsultant Psychiatrist