Restarting the Human Body

Recently, I passed out and had to go to the emergency room. Just a few hours earlier, I had gone in for a routine blood test and was feeling completely fine. After my blood was drawn and the nurse put a Band-Aid on my arm, I suddenly started to feel lightheaded. I remember asking if that was normal—and within a second, I blacked out.

I woke up to the nurse asking for my phone. Then I passed out again. When I came to, I saw her holding my phone—then blacked out once more. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. When I finally began to stay awake, my vision was blurry, I couldn’t speak, and I felt incredibly confused. Eventually, I regained enough awareness to be taken to the emergency room.

There, I learned I had experienced Vasovagal Syncope. It’s a condition where the body overreacts to certain triggers—like pain or stress—by suddenly dropping your heart rate and blood pressure. That drop can cause fainting, which is what happened to me.

The Computing Connection

As a computer engineer, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between this experience and the way computers function. In many ways, the human body is like a computer. It has intricate systems and components working together to keep everything running smoothly. But just like a computer, when something goes wrong, the system can crash—or, in my case, shut down and try to restart.

The doctor explained that my body was overwhelmed with stress, and fainting was essentially a reset mechanism. That explanation immediately made me think of how computers respond to errors. Sometimes, the most effective solution is to simply turn it off and back on again. The body, it seems, has a similar approach.

This experience reminded me of how fascinating and interconnected systems—whether biological or digital—can be. My body, just like a computer, found a way to reboot itself in order to cope. It’s wild to think about, but also strangely reassuring: whether it’s a bug in code or a biological glitch, sometimes the best response is a reset.

Images as used in order of appearance: ¹².

Footnotes

1. Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash ↩

2. Photo by John M. Smit on Unsplash ↩