The day started brightly enough. It was clear, warm, and light enough at 5:15 a.m. to start a pre-work bike ride. Mr. Pug and I suited up and took off by 5:45 a.m. We were a mile into it and I was just starting to breathe hard, and I felt a trickle at my nose. I put my hand up and was startled to see a huge shmear of blood across my (brand new gel) bike glove. Mr. Pug was out of sight already around the bend.
I stopped and tried to staunch the flow with one of the two bandannas I always carry, and within seconds, the bandanna was soaked. Good thing it was already bright red. I was well into soaking the second one when some joggers stopped, fascinated by the gruesome spectacle of me standing there with blood pouring from my nose like a faucet and onto the roadside gravel. They forced me to lie down, which made all the blood go down the back of my throat, so I guess I recovered some of my lost iron by drinking blood like a vampire. At one point, I had to cough up an egg-sized clot - yack.
Mr. Pug finally arrived and was frightened by seeing his bloodstained wife lying on the ground, surrounded by people, and he called the paramedics. The dispatched a crew, and advised me over the phone to sit up, lean forward and pinch the bridge of my nose. By the time the paramedics arrived, I had been bleeding like a hockey player after a fight for about 20 minutes, but it was finally subsiding. I declined a trip to the hospital, and they advised me to stay home today and take it easy, which I am doing.
All told, I’m guessing I lost about a pint of blood today, making me feel as if I had been to the Red Cross to donate. Whyinhell should I get a nosebleed like this? You’d think someone opened a vein in my sinuses with a scalpel. I’ve never had anything like it in my life.
Moral: during a bad nosebleed, unless you want to chugalug your own blood, lean forward, not back. That was just plain gross.
As you now know you never ever lean back. They used to tell people to do that but not any more.
You can’t digest your own blood and you could either choke as it goes back down your throat, or you could start to throw it back up which will start the nose again. And watch your BM’s. You will get some in there also.
Get a good nose spray. You won’t be using it for the stuffy nose effect but the side effect which causes the blood vessles to contract and makes them less likely to bleed.
On dry days you can also take a bit of vaseline or the like and use a q-tip and put a small amount in your nose.
You can lose enough blood through your nose to end up having a blood transfusion but that is worse case senerio.
Pinching the bridge of the nose works as well as putting pressure under the inside of your top lip where the little divider skin is.
Also a cool wash cloth on the back of the neck or an ice pack.
Wow, I didn’t realise I had become such an expert. Kind of scary really.
But this is what you learn with a child with a platelet disorder.
I hope you are feeling better and that you have no more worries with your nose.
I’ve been there pugluvr. Very scary indeed and I’m glad you’re ok.
My awful nosebleed occurred when I was 8 months pregnant with my first child. The killer nosebleed I got happened one afternoon. I’d come home and grabbed my pint of orange shebet (as I did every afternoon) and sat down on the couch to watch some t.v. I had the most violent sneeze I’ve ever had in my life and my nose started bleeding. I grabbed a few kleenex but they were soaked up quickly so I grabbed a washcloth. It too got soaked quickly. I was standing over my bathroom sink and the blood was literally pouring out of my nose. I called my mom at work and told her what was happening. She called the ambulance because I was hysterical and completely freaking out. I was losing soooo much blood and was afraid something was going to happen to my baby. She also called my dad and the two of them showed up about two minutes after the ambulance got there.
The EMT put an ice pack on the back of my neck, pinched the bridge of my nose and also shoved a cool washcloth under my upper lip (that hurt!) and the bleeding stopped… for about a minute. After 2-3 of these attempts it stopped and seemed to be stopped for good but they told me if it started up again I should go to the hospital. About 5 minutes after the ambulance left the blood clot that formed between my nose and throat broke off and slid down my throat and I started bleeding like a stuck pig again. On the way to the hospital (about a 3 minute drive from where I lived at the time) I completely soaked a large bath towel.
The doctor at the ER ended up putting liquid cocaine in my nose (not harmful for the baby) and packing my nostril with a cotten tube the size of a tampon! Talk about pain! I had to keep that stupid thing in my nose for two days. I went to the doctor two days later to have the tampon removed from my nose. When he pulled that thing out I literally saw stars!! I thought I was going to pass out because it was so painful. They said I’d burst a blood vessel so far back in my nose that the clot would form but because it was at the curve where my nose meets my throat so the clot didn’t have anything to hold on to and would slide down my throat and the bleeding would start all over again. Pretty disgusting. After he removed that tampon thing he cauterized the vessels and I didn’t have anymore problems… except the fact that I lost 5 pounds in two days which isn’t good when you’re pregnant! I put vaseline in my nose with a q-tip and use a nose spray to keep my nose moist. I did that throughout my 2nd pregnancy and didn’t get a nosebleed that whole time so it must work.
One thing though… even when you lean forward and pinch your nose you still swallow a lot of blood. It just backs up in your nose and runs down your throat anyway. When the EMTs were doing that to me I asked them to put a bowl under my face so I could spit out the blood clots before they slid down my throat. That was the most disgusting thing ever!
When you pinch your nose to stop the bleed what you are supposed to do is pinch it at the bridge of the nose hopefully over the bleed to stop the flow.
Kiki it sounds like they pinched yours a bit too low and you were still getting flow.
Maybe you were bleeding higher than where it’s possible to pinch and that is why they packed it?
Packing is terrible.
They lied to me about it with my son. I had never seen a nose packed before and they told me it was a bit of cotton on with a string (think tampon which works in a pinch) and that they would slide it up in his nose and that would be that.
Okay, it was huge! And they crammed it in his nose! And then of course it expands making it even more uncomfortable for my five year old.
But when you have an eight hour nose bleed and you lose the cauterization with the bleeding that they did the night before there isn’t much else to do except that or sedate and electric cauterization.
They did it electrically with the right nostril in Feb. when he had two three hours nose bleed and they thought they were going to have to give him blood since he lost so much. That way held but when they did the left side in May with just the sulfa the scab bleed out cause he was bleeding so badly.
It’s not pretty to watch your five year old bleeding so badly that you have every nurse on the floor in your room and they can’t get it packed because the flow is so fast. And then because of the amount that he swallowed to watch your youngest son vomit mass amounts of blood.
I’ve become a bit numb to it all but my nephew was visiting us the last time this happened and he freaked out and went into a panic over it.
I’ve got a few threads around here explaining why my son does this. And believe it or not this is one of the mild symptoms.
And if I’m hijacking please forgive me but when I get talking about this stuff I can talk for hours. And it usually all comes in a big rush overwhelming people. Sorry.
You’re not hijacking, Kricket, you’re right on topic. I know more about nosebleeds now than I knew 36 hours ago because of you and kiki and some googling on the subject. I’m sorry about your son; it must be horrible to have to watch someone you love go through this repeatedly. Mr. Pug was way more frightened than I was – seeing me bleed copiously all over the place must have been nervewracking for him. Besides, I had the distraction of the extremely well-muscled and tanned (male) paramedics all tending to me.
Anyway, there’s not been a hint of a return of the bleeding. After hearing the “nose tampon” stories, I’m more than relieved. It’s still a mystery how it happened, though.
I get nose bleeds all the time, not nearly as scary as the ones described here, but annoying in their frequency and random occurence. (for instance, (POTENTIAL TMI) recently it was “that time of the month” for my wife, but she was freshly showered and clean…and while I’m going down on her, drip, drip, I realize that I’m getting blood on her)
It was hell growing up with constant nosebleeds. Everyone (boy scouts, junior lifeguard instructors, school nurses) would tell me to tip my head back. My mom, an ER nurse, had told me not to tip my head back, so every time I got a nosebleed I also had an argument with an authority figure. Whee.
So, when you guys say “the bridge of the nose” do you mean directly between the eyes, or do you mean below the bony part? I’m not entirely convinced I’m doing it right.
The cold on the back of the neck is definitely a good thing. Although it’s not the most pleasant remedy in the winter.
Since I too have had this lovely experience as a 9 year old, 18 year old and 27 year old (see a pattern, hmmm?), I agree with everything everyone has said, the only thing I’ll add is since the vaseline on a q-tip feels kinda well … gookey, my doctors always advised me to get a wash cloth soaked in as hot of water as I could stand and hold it up to my nose to breathe deeply. I still do that to this day when my allergies get the best of me and I can feel my nasal passages drying out. Since mine would last hours, another thing a doctor had me do is after 20 minutes if it wasn’t slowing down and clotting to actually blow my nose. This was gross as it cleared out a huge clot trying to form that just would not. Once that was gone clotting usually followed suit.
Growing up I thought bloody noses lasting an hour were normal … not til much later did I learn anything more than 5 or 10 minutes watch and after 20 get to the doctor.
Yeah, I have them from time to time myself, always seems to hit when I’m coming down with the flu, or right before my period. The weird thing is that many times the worst ones are when I have just barely touched my nose or rubbed lightly absent-mindedly.
I remember one I had at work that was particularly bad, my office was a LONG way from the nearest bathroom, and I had no Kleenex around. I had people running down hallways looking for paper towels and toilet paper while I FREAKED out because it seemed nothing helped. Finally some ice cubes applied underneath my nose, right above my lip helped. I was sick with the flu for a week after that one.
Isn’t it something that people are always wanting you to lean backwards when nosebleeds happen? Why on earth would you want the stuff going down your throat? And the blood clots are the WORST. I thought I was dying the first time I snorted one of those things out of my nostril.
Sengkelat: I was told by the paramedics to pinch just below the bony part of the nose, just above the nostrils. They also gave me a bizarre little plastic nose clip to use in case the bleeding started again. Thankfully, it never did, so I didn’t have to go about wearing the silly-looking thing.