A few years ago, I had a cyst on my ovary rupture for the first time. It was right after sex, so I assumed the intense pain I felt in my abdomen was just from my husband bumping into my cervix. The pain seemed to lessen after a few minutes, so I didn't really think much of it and assumed it would continue to go away.
When I decided to jump in the shower about a minute later, I started to feel extremely nauseous. It was pretty uncomfortable, so I got out and sat down on top of the toilet lid until I felt well enough to get up and lay down in bed. As soon as I stood up and left the bathroom, I suddenly felt incredibly weak and crumpled to the floor as my blood pressure rapidly dropped. My vision was going dark and my ears were ringing, and I had this moment of confusion wondering what was happening and if I was going to die. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before and was incredibly terrifying. My thoughts were racing and I could see my arms and hands propping myself up in front of me, but they somehow didn't feel like a part of me. I truly thought that was it for me, and my husband was going to discover my body in the hallway later. It sucked.
After laying on the ground for a minute, my full vision started to return and I felt well enough to slowly get up and walk into our bedroom. I called out to my husband, who was finishing up a shower in our master bathroom, and he quickly came out to see me since he could hear the fear in my voice. I told him about my episode and we ended up going to the ER later that evening when I started lightly bleeding. That's when they told me a cyst must have ruptured. I'm not exactly sure what caused the chain of events that happened, but I had been taking a very hot shower so I'm guessing that plus the rupture moments prior had an impact on my blood pressure and that caused an episode of near-syncope.
I wish I could say that feeling like dying made me less afraid of death, but it only made me more afraid. I have developed pretty severe health anxiety since then and am probably going to try to see a therapist to help me with it sometime in the future.