I guess, if you live long enough, you have the opportunity to experience many of life’s little annoyances. Most of these come as reminders that our bodies are not immortal and they will eventually break down. It begins slowly as muscles start to ache, gravity exerts its influence and Mother Nature seems to make the winters colder and summers hotter.

Too often I boast that even though my soul carries around a sixty year old body, I have been immune to many of the slow downs, bathroom trips and pill popping of others in my generation. Funny how life has a way of catching up to you and… it is usually at a most inopportune time.

For example…

Tina, Bella our little pup, and I recently spent four days hidden away in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The days were filled with hikes, staying up late, eating too much and sleeping in later than any work day. It was an uneventful long weekend, just as get-a-ways should be,

Except for…

My gushing nose bleed the third day of the trip. At sixty years of age I have never had a nose bleed. Even as a kid being smacked in the nose by balls, elbows and occasionally a few doors that might have jumped out in front of me, I have never had a nose bleed. But this changed when I stood up from the couch with hope of joining Bella in her chase for chipmunks and in the process I dripped a trail of blood a bloodhound with a cold could follow.

The last time I was this bloody was when I fell off the back porch into a rose bush. Then I looked like the looser in a cat fight; now I looked like a prize fighter that forgot to dodge a punch.  Without getting too graphic which I almost need to, the blood was coming in clots as I leaned over the kitchen sink trying not to make a mess all over the floor. Tina was throwing all of her remedies for stopping bleeds and none of them were working.  I tried pressure on the nostril, then pressure on the lower lip with an ice cube pressed against it. None of that worked. I continued to drip blood into the sink like a leaky faucet. I think somewhere along the line a tourniquet around the neck was suggested but I opted out of that idea.

Poor Bella was just wondering when we were going to get back to chasing chipmunks.

It finally came to an end and we chalked it up to weather, dry heat in the cabin or maybe thin blood from a few drinks the night before. All was fine until…

We went for a hike along one of the public roads near the cabin. Bella was having fun checking out all of the new smells along the way. I was afraid she was going to get a blister on her nose from rubbing across the grass and gravel exploring the world. At one point, when I bent over to check on her latest discovery, on comes the crimson. I was turning the grass, road and the few Kleenexes I had stuffed in my pocket redder than the fall colors in the hills.

When the new episode started, we were probably a good mile from the cabin and I was quickly running out of practical things to shove up my nose. The thought even crossed my mind at one point to start using the leaves but that just didn’t seem like a safe route to travel. As I mention, this was a public road which all of a sudden seemed to be the most traveled path in the mountains. It was getting harder to hide the massacre look to my face and hands from passing motorists. I am sure I was the topic of more than one dinner conversation that evening.

What hurt the most though was giving up the cigar that was only half finished, but it was getting harder to juggle blood, Kleenex and cigar. To pitch a cigar, with so much left is like eating half of the best steak you have ever been served, get half way in and then say, “okay, I can eat the rest, but I just don’t want to.”

Anyway, Tina wisely convinced me the cigar was probably not helping my cause and since I couldn’t convince her or Bella to finish it, I had no choice but to snub it out.

The next morning brought another bloody round. Waking up I could feel something wet on my face. My pillow, t-shirt and sheets were red. It looked like a crime scene from movies when they find the deceased in bed and some astute detective says, “Looks like he’s been shot.”

How were we going to explain this to housekeeping? I thought about placing one of those fake hands that hang out the back of car trunks under the sheets and pillow but they probably wouldn’t see the humor in that. We opted for a few extra dollars in the tip and a note of explanation as to what happened. Again, probably good conversation back at housekeeping headquarters.

When we returned home from the cabin in a rare moment of correct action and after much prodding by Tina, I set up an appointment with a doctor to check out the situation. Not what I wanted to do, but every once in a while a bit of common sense works its way in.

A week passed before I could see a doctor. Everyday brought a new bleed, usually first thing in the morning. By day seven, I became a master at stopping the flow and my evolved technique included one of Tina’s cotton balls shoved up my nose as a plug. It never failed, once the cotton was up the nose, Bella gave the signal that she was ready to go outside. If you would have driven past the house during these outside bathroom breaks you would have seen a cute little schnauzer leading a person around with what looked like the beginning of a nice bird’s nest hanging out his nose.

I have no dignity left.

The day of the appointment was the first day I did not have a bleed. Kind of like taking your car to the mechanic and the noise stops. So, my first thought was cancel the appointment, well I wasn’t getting away with that.

The doctor I used was one who many years ago fixed another problem with little hassle and minimal discomfort. The doctor, who I do have great respect for, is not your ordinary modern doc. He is more of a Norman Rockwell doctor with his silver reflector wrapped around his head and a no nonsense bed side manner.

“So you been having nosebleeds.”

“Yep first time in my life.”

“Well let’s take a look.”

The first thing he did was check my ears. I am not a master of human anatomy but I was pretty sure the nose and ears were not that connected to be the source of my discomfort, but he is the doctor.

The next thing he did was flip his reflector down and grab what looked like a pair of needle nose pliers from Ace Hardware, pushes my head back against the chair, peers through the hole of the reflector and spreads my nostril with the prongs of the pliers.

“Yep, we are going to cauterize those capillaries.”

Those are words I never wanted to hear. I’ve heard stories of people with broken noses or bleeding situations which would not stop until they were cauterized. My image of this process was fresh from dad’s experience with skin cancer and uncontrollable bleeding from the surgery. Late one night dad and I made a trip to the Falls City emergency room to stop bleeding which we both felt was out of the ordinary. To fix the problem, the doctor fired up what looked like a pen with a glowing tip. He touched it to the bleeding and what smelled like hamburgers on the grill filled the ER.

The ER doctor said, “Now that should do it. You take this home and if it happens again, just touch this to the surface and he will be fine.”

Right.

That pen stayed in the junk drawer of the house until we closed up Morton Street and said good bye to the house.

My image now was of the doctor pulling out his junior wood burning kit and sticking it up my nose. Instead, he pulled out a hose and with little finesse stuck it up my nose and gave what felt like a blast of freon. It was like shoving an ice cube up my nostril. Don’t ask me how I know what that feels like.

“Doesn’t taste too good does it?” was his only consolation.

I agreed.

“We will have to numb it a little more.” With that he shoved more stuff up the nostril and left the room.

Once my nose started to thaw I could sense the numbness settling in. My teeth and upper lip were getting numb, I was hoping that was what was supposed to happen. After what seemed like an hour but it probably wasn’t, the doctor came back in and announced,

“Well that should be numb now.” My first thought was,

“Should be?”

I was bracing for fire up the nose when he pulled out three sticks, each with what looked like some chemical on the end. Up the nose he goes. Now if this is what it felt like numb, I would hate to know what it would have felt like without all the prep. But I was brave and only one tear welled up in the corner of one eye.

Next he shoved what looked like a cigarette up my nose.

“This is packing that will dissolve on its own. You will be fine with it. Have a good day.”

That was it.

I exited through the crowded waiting room with every eye turning towards me. Each one of my fellow patients hopefully thought, “Well he survived, maybe I will also.” I tried to look like nothing happened as I walked a straight line to the door.

I didn’t realize how bad I looked until we were back in the car and I flipped down the visor mirror. I looked like a coal miner with my blackened nose. The tip of my nose was black and the packing was already dissolving and running down into my moustache as a black drool. The rest of the day was spent wiping away the packing that came out the consistency of hair gel. I was not fit for public appearance.

The next day, when it was time to go to work, I had to clean myself up. I figured a little rubbing and all evidence of the day before would be gone. Not quite. Soap did not take the black away. Nail polish remover didn’t touch it. Toothpaste, my go to for stubborn stains, no effect. Shave cream, nope. It was Tina’s suggestion to use the mechanic degreaser soap. The degreaser made some progress but by this time I think I had the start of a good size chemical blister on my nose from all of the rubbing and mixtures of various cleaning agents.

Just a note for you should you find yourself in a similar situation, toothpaste and nail polish remover were probably never meant to go up the nose. They burn worse than the acid sticks

But, all is well now and I can add one more experience to life’s repertoire and just explain it with… its all part of growing up.

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