Noses.......What More Can I Say?

I have had quite a few requests to blog about my wonderful bloody nose experience I had yesterday. After much thought and consideration, I've decided to talk about it. Here is the situation:

I was at work yesterday afternoon, just about to give my swimmers a set, when out of no where, my nose began to drip blood. It was coming out quickly, so I rushed over to the lifeguards for some assistance, my hands covering my nose. My hands were beginning to hold quite a good amount of blood by the time the lifeguard got me some paper towels. I covered my nose with a huge wad of paper towels, and began pinching the nose bone to help slow the bleeding. The lifeguards gave me an ice pack to place above my nose to also help stop the bleeding. Nothing seemed to be working. The blood continued oozing out in large amounts, and the bio-hazard bag was quickly filling up with bloody paper towels. Our head coach took over my group of swimmers for me, thankfully. All my swimmers were staring over at me whenever they got the chance, which was quite embarassing. Then, all the little kids began to arrive at the pool for their practice time. They all surrounded me, which was very uncomfortable, so one of the lifeguards proceeded to move them away. After about 40 minutes, my nose was still bleeding quite excessively. I began to feel tired, weak, thirsty, and a little bit faint. My stomach was also cramping a little. The lifeguards provided me with juice and lolly-pops, to keep my sugar levels up. We tried many different tactics, such as shoving gauze up in my nose. Nothing was working. Finally, we called our head lifeguard boss, since she was not at the pool at the time. She told us to stick gause up under my upper lip, because there is a pressure point there. This helped a little. Our boss stayed on call to continue to assist us. I also had to have the lifeguard supervisor pinch my nose bone for me, because my hands were becoming to weak and shaky to squeeze. The lifeguards also applied an ice pack to the back of my neck, to help with the light-headedness, I guess. My fellow coach, friend, and lifeguard acted as my mommy in cleaning the blood off my hands and face, so I didn't look so gross. After about 45 minutes, my sister, who was one of the lifeguards helping me, called my parents. Though we were able to finally slow the bleeding somewhat, it seemed that the bleeding was not going to completely stop for us. So my dad took me to the doctor. When I got to the doctor, I had to wait in the waiting room for quite sometime. Finally, the doctor was able to see me. To stop the bleeding, he put a "solution" in my nose. After 2 straight hours of bleeding, it finally stopped. The "solution" didn't really hurt or sting my nose. It just felt wet. Then, my doctor had me pinch my nostrils shut, as tight as possible, for 15 minutes. After that one of his nurses came in to clean out my nose with saline drops. My nose was so congested with blood, that I could not breath through it until the nurse had cleaned it out. Once it was clean, my doctor was able to look in and find where my nose was bleeding from. He found that both nostrils were bleeding. He then cauterized my nose with silver nitrate. This burned alot, alot, alot! It made my eyes water and it made me sneeze like 20 times. That was a difficult task, trying not to sneeze while the doctor had sticks with silver nitrate up my nose. But, oh, it burned! It was all worth it though. My nose stopped bleeding, and I think my body was able to build my blood supply back up. The gross part is that I have been spitting up blood all day. You probably did not want to know that, but now you do, so ha! The blood spitting is nasty, but I am so glad I am on summer vacation and do not have to deal with any of this stuff at school. That would be yucky!

I would like to thank my Nedgie Wedgie for waking me up this morning to make sure I was ok. How sweet is that? Not many friends come to your house at 9:00 a.m. just to wake you up and see if you are feeling better. Thanks Nedgie Wedgie! You made my day!