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Bloody, Bloody, Nose Event Date: July, 2008 Written Date: September 15, 2009 In the middle of June 2008 I had surgery on my nose due to a deviated septum. After the surgery I had what the doctor referred to as nose tampons shoved up each nostril. It was very uncomfortable and I was out of work for a week, as well as on lots of pain meds. This story isn't about my week of relaxing on the couch and taking vicodin, but it does play a part into what happens later on. A few weeks after the surgery I had left work early due to a severe headache which felt like it was coming from my sinuses. It definitely wasn't a migraine, but the pain felt similar. I went home and passed out for a few hours. When I woke up, my headache was gone, so I decided to go downstairs and watch some television and work on my first attempt at a novel. It was pretty warm out so I had a fan blowing around the living room as I typed away. As I was hard at work, I felt something drip onto my arm. At first I thought it might have been sweat, since it felt like it was 90 degrees inside, so I shrugged it off and kept going. The next drip came, and one after that. I felt the warmth from the wet spot and looked down. There was a small pool of blood collecting on my forearm. Not thinking much of it, I went into the kitchen and plugged it up with some paper towels. Up until this point, it was only my right nostril bleeding. I went back to the couch and picked my laptop back up to resume typing. Within a few minutes I felt a few more drops fall onto my arm. This time though, it was from my left nostril. Back to the kitchen I went and stuffed the other side of my nose with paper towels. Hoping the situation was under control, I resumed writing. Within 5 minutes, I felt some more blood drops on my arms. I was a bit confused, because I knew I didn't have any more holes in my nose, so back to the kitchen I went and I pulled both sides clean of paper towels only to see a faucet of blood pour straight out of my nose. At first I thought it was pretty cool, then realized that I was in a little more trouble than I expected. I quickly stuffed my nose up, but that wasn't helpful in the slightest. No sooner did the paper towels get in there that they needed to be swapped out. Yes, that's how fast the blood was pooring from my nose. I said "fuck it" and just took a big wad of paper towels and held it to my nose as I ran upstairs to the bathroom. I decided that I was going to take a shower and clean myself up a little bit and head over to the emergency room. The whole shower idea was quickly nixed when I couldn't figure out how to get my nose to stop bleeding. I couldn't drive myself because I couldn't steer, hold my nose and shift at the same time. I called my mom up to see if she could give me a ride. She couldn't leave work, so she called my grandmother to come get me. What a sight it must've been to see someone walk out of their house with a roll of paper towels held up to their face and blood trailing behind him. At the ER, the receptionist started taking my information and told me it would be about a 30 to 45 minute wait. I told her that I had been bleeding from my nose for over 2 hours at this point. The bleeding at slowed a little bit at this point, but still fast. I excused myself to the bathroom to get some more paper towels or toilet paper, whichever they had available in there. They did in fact, have those brown paper towels in there. I opened up the case to it and took the whole stack and went back to the receptionist. She told me again that it would be a little bit of a wait. Annoyed, I leaned my head over the desk and removed the paper towels away from my face. As the blood poured from my face onto the desk and creating a puddle at an unnatural rate, she immediately turned green and called the ER nurse to come get me right away. This is where the fun part starts. The bloody nose started around 8:00 PM, here it is almost 11:00 PM. The ER nurse put me in a room and started asking me the usual questions while taking my vitals.
DumbNurse: So when did the bleeding start? I did as the nurse had told me to do. Within 10 seconds, blood starting draining into the back of my throat, and since I couldn't breathe through my nose, I started gagging. The gagging turned into me choking, which turned into me spitting a stream of blood across the room onto the wall and all over myself.
DumbNurse: Tilt your head forward. QUICK! I watched as the nurse walked out of the room and I noticed my mom and my cousin standing next to my grandmother. My cousin walked in and gave me a hug and told me she couldn't stand seeing this much blood on someone close to her and she left. I got out of the chair and looked into the mirror near the sink. There was an exuberant amount of blood all over my face, and it was showing up just fine on my black shirt and black shorts. It looked like someone beat me in the face with a baseball bat, just without the marks and dents. I sat back in the chair to wait for this amazing nurse to come back in. It felt like 30 minutes had passed before she came back in. In her hands were a pair of scissors, gauze, and novicane. I was scared.
DumbNurse: We're going to numb up your nose and put in these balloons to put pressure on the inside of your nose to stop the bleeding She cut the gauze into 2 strips about 1/4 inch wide, and about 6 or so inches long. She dipped each strip into the novicane and tried to shove the first one into my left nostril. When she realized her fat fingers were much too large to fit all the way up, she took a pair of surgical scissors to fish the gauze all the way up. I can't even describe the pain this woman inflicting on my nose. I made the mistake of breathing through my nose and the gauze went into the back of my throat.
DumbNurse: Wha...umm... I lost the gauze... I reached into my mouth and pulled it out from the back of my throat and handed it to her. She looked horrified, then attempted to do it again. Yea, she failed at being a nurse. Finally, after 10 minutes of screwing around with my nose, she managed to get one strip all the way in, and gave up on the second one. She walked out of the room again to get these plastic balloon things, which looked like coctail weiners that had a valve on them to blow them up. Without warning, she ripped the strips of gauze out of my nose. While one side didn't bother me because it was barely in, the other side fucking hurt. It was danging near the back of my throat where your nasal cavity meets up with it, and the blood inside was starting to dry around it. It definitely didn't tickle. After a "What the fuck?" from me, she started to put the plastic weiners up my nose. The first one went up the right nostril. It went in fine for the most part, then she filled it up a bit with air to put pressure on the capillaries to help stop the bleeding. Now, I'm not sure what kind of logic a person has to have for the next part, but this really made me think she got her nursing license from sending in 10 cereal box tops and received it as a prize. I have a somewhat small nose. These plastic hotdogs were about as round as my thumb. My nose can't fit 2 of those up there at a time, but she tried anyways. She literally palmed the little device and attempted to force it into my left nostril. This led to a bunch of "are you a fucking idiot?", "did you google how to take care of your patients?" and "you suck as a nurse". After she was done with me, it looked like I really did get bashed in the face with a baseball bat. My nose was swollen, under my eyes looked like they were bruising (probably from lack of sleep and torture), and blood staind most of my face and clothes. She gave me 1 percocet to alleviate the pain, which it didn't. She filled me out a prescription for 5 percocets. I asked her how much pain she wanted to cause me because the prescription wouldn't last more than 4 hours. I swear she had it in for me. After this experience, I went to the specialist first thing in the morning to have him put in real nose splints and fill out a real prescription. He laughed at my misfortune...asshole. I swear, if you can hold off from going to the ER, I highly suggest you do. Those people couldn't take care of a stuffed rabbit.
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