my latest trip to the ER

Sunday night around 11:30pm: I went to sleep. All was normal.

Sunday night/Monday morning 1:30am: I woke up. At first I thought I had a runny nose but quickly figured out it was a bloody nose. Which would not stop. Applying pressure made it worse. A Google search (rarely a good idea in this situation) did yield some helpful information. The most consistent information was: if the bleeding doesn't stop in ten minutes, go to the ER.

1:40am: Still on the fence about the ER, but still bleeding.

1:41am: The biggest blood clot ever came out of my body. (Ewww.) At that point I was really scared. I called Amanda and begged for help.

2:00am (Thank goodness Amanda got her car fixed.) The bleeding slowed to a dull trickle. The magic words at the ER seemed to be, "I can't stop bleeding" because I got right in.

The timeline in the ER is a little blurry (Amanda could tell you better). But the doctor came in, looked at me, left, came back, left again, and then came back to actually work on my nose. It had basically stopped bleeding by then and I was feeling pretty guilty about dragging Amanda out of bed and across town for something that basically stopped on it's own.

And then the doc touched me. Gooosh. And we were back in bloody nose business. So she cauterized the area. Holy mother of Wow! did that hurt.

The doc came back to check on me and found that I'd sprung a leak so she cauterized more. This one didn't hurt so bad, but it still did not tickle.

4:07am: "We'll give that ten minutes to make sure it stops" says the doc.

5:00am: Still no doc to do one last check (thanks Abbott Northwestern) but the RN sent me home with follow up instructions. I called in sick/late to work and went to bed thankful for health, health insurance, and a friend I can wake up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep to sit with me in the ER so I won't be scared.