Nosebleed!

And I'm not talking about bad seats at Yankee Stadium. Have you ever had one of these? The mom has had a history with nosebleeds (including the one that wouldn't stop and required cauterization.... ouch!) as was the grandfather... I've only had a few brushes previously with nosebleed imposters. This morning I got a gusher. I've had a cold for the past week and it seems to come and go and last night it was in rare form. All night my right nostril was completely plugged. At one point at about 4:30am I rolled over onto my left side and it opened just a bit but not enough to make sleeping like that comfortable, so I just rolled back to my right and was contented to only be able to breathe out of one side of my head. At about 5:27am I asked my poor husband to go downstairs and get me a bottle of ginger ale. Did I mention the sore throat? I figure it had to be a combination of half breathing out of my mouth and half some kind of awful post nasal drip (pleasant!) Miraculously the ginger ale seemed to do the trick. I managed to sleep soundly until 7:30.

Then I'm up and around, I shower, etc. and after I brush my teeth I realize that my nose is starting to unclog but I clearly have to blow my nose. It was one of those feelings where it seems like the Titanic is quickly sinking and if you don't act fast it will be at the bottom of the Atlantic. If you don't get rid of some ballast quickly, you'll be all congested once again. I take my opportunity. I don't even blow my nose with much force or gusto. What happens? All blood! Freaky, scary, bright red BLOOD! I semi freak out. Blood actually starts coming out of my nose independently and dripping on furniture. I tilt my head back and realize that's a bad idea! The husband tries to calm me down and suggests I stuff a tissue up my nose. I don't want to be one of "those" people, but really there's nothing else to do. This goes on for a good ten minutes. We have to leave for work.

By this time I have a headache in what I imagine to be the origin of the nosebleed somewhere up in between my eye and my nose. I have a bottle of Evian and a pack of tissues and we're trying to get to work. I find that the Evian bottle, when squished into my eye socket relieves some of the headache pain. We're driving on route 1 and I have a tissue shoved up one nostril and a bottle of Evian on my eye. I must have looked like a million bucks.

Eventually things seem to quiet down, we've moved on to my nose now just being runny and there doesn't seem to be any more blood. I get onto the train and try and sleep for a bit. When I arrive in NY apparently the jolt of having to stand and walk around made my nose decide, what the hell, let's start up again! It was less than before, but still, doesn't it just seem a little odd and unnatural for blood to be coming out of your nose? I'm at the job now and things seem to be better, though I'm still congested and at any time I might use that Evian bottle again.