Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
There's a particular point to be made to male frequent flyers here.
Before someone goes into cardiac arrest there is often a 15 minute period when the body slides up into crisis mode. For men in particular there may be a sense of doom, deep greyness, sweating, real discomfort, (these are the impacts of not having enough oxygen for the body's requirement) - maybe moderate pain, chest pressure, heart going into overdrive. These happen before the classic symptoms of cardiac arrest. So if you are male and this happens to you, and you're flying or in airport, what do you do? You haul yourself over to the toilets since you think you are going to be sick. And you don't tell anyone. Women tend to raise the alarm. People sometimes think it's food poisoning or excess alcohol, when it's more like a lifetime of build up. As a result there is a high chance that someone goes into cardiac arrest on the way to the toilets, in the toilet area or very nearby. So if you find someone on the floor of a toilet you may need to react quickly.
Such an important point.
The classic is the person who starts choking in a restaurant and then heads to the restroom so as not to cause a fuss.
"Dying of embarrassment" they call it in the business, I understand.
I had exactly an episode of the feelings you describe above happen to me on the tube, although fortunately I was with a friend (and I didn't have a cardiac arrest!) and there was a happy ending (although perhaps sadly not in the Thai-massage sense of that phrase
).