language location. A few weeks into my mission in Japan was Sports Day. A holiday Japan invented as a part of a set of holidays, so there was a holiday in every month of the year. The district (not a missionary district, but the group of branches, because the area wasn't a stake) had a big event where all the members and missionaries gathered for sporting events, picnic lunch, etc. at the fields of a school (closed and available because of the holiday). One of the events was a relay race. Many of the fields at schools and in public parks in Japan aren't grass, but hard clay. The clay often has small pebbles, large rough sand, etc. on top, which creates a slick surface.

The pday shoes I took to Japan had basically zero tread. Running the relay when I went to turn on the slick pebbles on clay surface, I slipped, fell and scraped my hands and knees pretty good. There was a significant amount of small pebbles, etc. ground into the wound in my hand. The wound was about the size of two dimes side by side in my palm. There were several nurses in the group with lots of first aid equipment and supplies there (I think there were a couple hundred people in the group).

I was directed to the nurses, who put antiseptic on my wounds and started picking the debris from my palm. Next thing I knew I was on the ground. The sky was spinning round and round above me and there was a circle of Japanese around me, talking rapidly. This was only a few weeks into my time in Japan, so I didn't really understand what was being said, much less with me just coming back into consciousness after fainting. Such a weird feeling.

I was given tweezers and some antiseptic and was told that my body would likely work more debris to the surface of the wound, so I should clean the wound again before going to sleep. That evening, back home in our apartment I sat down at my desk, rested my hand on the desk and started cleaning debris out of my palm with the tweezers they sent home with me. I awoke on the floor with books piled on top of me. My companion told me to stay on the floor and finished the cleaning.

Thankfully, those are my only 2 fainting experiences, both the same day. One weird fainting experience:

I have donated blood, double red, platelets, plasma fairly regularly all my life. At a fairly recent blood drive it was weird to see one of the phlebotomists laying on one of the donor beds with their legs raised on pillows, because they had fainted. Seeing one of the vampires (phlebotomists) faint did not raise the confidence of the potential donor crowd. I still donated.