Oh Fuck

[citrakayah]

So.

Today I was in Physics 203A. Physics 203A is, I might add, very boring. The instructor does a decent impression of a monotone and is generally the type of person who, while perfectly nice and decent, is also not the type of person you would want to teach a class.

I'm struggling to remain focus. I'm fairly sure I'm succeeding.

Then I suddenly discover that everything has changed and twenty minutes of passed.

I don't know what happened. That scares me, because I. Don't. Understand. Did I fall asleep? It didn't feel like falling asleep; while falling asleep I have perception of time passing. The case manager working with me things it could have been a seizure, but surely something like that... I don't know, it seems unlikely. And afterwards, I felt ill. Standing up was a fight, and my stomach was in rebellion.

Oh, and the same day I lost my wallet for a while and ran headfirst into a glass wall.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Two possibilities;
1. fugue state.. not a seizure, just your brain got so bored it stopped processing for a bit.
2. Time drift.. the intervening time didn't exist for you because you came unmoored from consensus reality and drifted.

[citrakayah]

1. Don't know how that would work.
2. How? Seems like it would violate physics.

[siliconshaman]

1. wikipedia on fugue states. Stress will do it, stress combined with the inability to do anything will trigger it.

2. Technically, yes this does violate standard physics, however, in certain quantum theories that may or may not be true [since they're still under investigation etc] it can happen. Ok to keep it simple, the notion of 'consciousness' is basically a standing wave of quantum functions, electrons in cellular microtubles, action potentials across synapses.. that kind of thing.. all of which is entangled. As such, the macro-field of 'you' which is your state of mind.. can kind of quantum tunnel. This can take several different forms, depending on what theory you're operating with, and can include essentally skipping segments of time.

Physically, nothing much happens.. at least in one theory [there's also several rather speculative ones that involve actual bodily movement though dimensions other than the usual spacial ones.] but for span of time your body is on auto-pilot while your consciousness is some place else... or nowhere in particular.

[citrakayah]

1. Maybe. Seems awfully short for one.
2. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff made some pretty severe errors in their assumptions on brain physiology.

[scatteredshells]

I'm not sure of the origins for the theory of #2 but it could be used as a sort of description for #1, really. But rather than calling it a fugue state I'd call it dissociation instead. I don't dissociate thanks to a dissociative disorder (though I do sometimes dissociate during extreme anxiety or a bipolar mood episode) but those do exist -- I dissociate from my surroundings frequently thanks to the ADHD. And when I do space out, time seems as though it ceases to exist, at least from my perceptual angle. Or else it seems to move so slowly. Hence the joking phrase: "in ADHD there are two senses of time. Now, and Not Now."

[feralkiss]

Confused kitty is confused!

[tornir]

Microsleep?
If you're tired or bored, bits of your brain can go for a coffee, leaving the rest still active, and you sitting up, with your eyes open, looking fully awake, but not.

[citrakayah]

Supposed to last for only a few seconds, not a third of an hour.

[allati]

I'd suggest dissociation (this sort of thing happens to me a lot, randomly dropping periods of time), but I don't experience sickness afterwards. It's a possibility, though?

But seizures are as well, I think I looked into absence seizures for a while before I decided dissociation made more sense for me.

I hope it's nothing too serious.

[burning_ground]

This happened to one of my coworkers: he just lost an hour of time at work, like it was just completely gone from his awareness. I don't know how it resolved, but I know he had to take a bit of sick leave to get it checked out. He seems to be doing fine now, though.

At any rate, sorry. I used to fall asleep in physics class all the time, and I know how inconvenient that was without deeper medical concerns. Wishing you well~

[scatteredshells]

JUST spacing out, yeah, I'd say a seizure seems unlikely. Those other things you mentioned on top of it though, I can see why your case manager would think of the prospect. Few seizures are of the tonic-clonic type, the stereotypical "fall down and kick and flail" sort. Certain types of seizures can very much show up as "space out for ten to twenty minutes" in addition to other possible symptoms.

I'm no doctor though, and the only person who could really confirm this sort of thing (and likely not right away either) is a neurologist, or similar. It does sound scary though and I'm very sorry to hear that this happened to you. I get space-outs like that all the time, er, minus the other symptoms though 'cause mine are related to things like the ADHD.

[crazy_raccoon]

I had a friend with epilepsy, and from what you describe... it sounds very similar. The length of time, though... that's very wrong.

An absence seizure, I saw one while playing DnD with a friend, and it's a little weird. Here's a video of what one looks like if you haven't seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obbg1BFt26Q

As you can see, the length of time is miniscule compared to a good twenty minutes. My friend didn't realize that time had passed, either. When he saw us all looking at him when it was over he figured it out easily enough. He knew he had the condition.

Only other thing I can think of is microsleep, something that affected me while I was in college. I lost a few minutes at a time, even in the middle of writing notes for class. I have pictures of what I wrote down that day in class, unintelligible gibberish that looked vaguely like a child trying out shorthand. My hand continued trying to write even after I fell asleep, and when I woke back up, I didn't know I had slept and kept trying to write the same note.

I had a vague sense that time was skipping forward, like maybe I missed a few sentences or equations here and there. I have no idea how much time I actually lost or how frequently, but it was a little disconcerting each time.

My friend sitting next to me said I didn't look like I was sleeping, either. No head nodding or eyes closing. Granted, he wasn't really watching me, but still. It's hard to miss stuff like that.

I hope you get good news.

[citrakayah]

Interesting. Don't know whether that was what it was like for me or not, of course, given that I was out for it, but at least it didn't happen again during the exam. It may have been due to dehydration, actually (thanks for suggesting that); I made sure to stay hydrated during the exam and it seems to have paid off. And the three test tubes worth of blood that was taken should prove enlightening.

Anyway, I'm going in for both an echocardiogram (turns out I have a heart murmur) and to talk to a neurologist.

[crazy_raccoon]

Didn't know they needed that much blood for tests. Wow.

Hopefully the murmur is harmless. I had one as a kid and upon further inspection they realized nothing was wrong. Just an extra sound. Apparently that's actually quite common in kids and teenagers.

[citrakayah]

Indeed. Rather shocking to me, too.