And the fun continues...

If you thought the last blog was gross PLEASE don't read this one. I've warned that the nature of this blog can be sometimes graphic and this is one of those times. Sorry. For all of my heart buddies out there I hope you can learn something from this and it will spare you the drama I just got to go through.

The great nosebleed continues! After all that mess the day before yesterday I had put my nosebleed behind me and settled into being sick. It's miserable but everyone gets the flu. Unfortunately, not everyone is on Plavix and Aspirin. Around 6:30 last night I coughed and the nosebleed started up again. This time was a little different though. It was literally dripping blood! Everywhere! No amount of pressure or Kleenex was stopping it so by 8:00 I was walking into the emergency room.

Have you ever just known something was wrong? After hours of pressure and it's still pouring blood I had a bad feeling that this was one of those times. I quit squeezing the hell out of my nose and just concentrated on keeping it from getting all over me. By 11:00 I was right. An ear nose and throat specialist had to be called in to fix it. Apparently, a vein in the very back of my nose had ruptured. No amount of pressure could reach it and with the Plavix it couldn't clot on it's own. Just great.

By now I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm thirsty, and I was so over this. Somewhere between the blood clots and the lidocane nose packing procedure I totally lost my sense of humor in the situation and just sunk into pitiful.

So what did they do? I had my nose packed with lidocane soaked cotton (OW!) to numb it. This was by far the worst part so that's the good news. After I was all numbed up they pull the packing out and inject another numbing agent in your nose to totally desensitize it. After that the doctor cauterizes the broken vein. Viola! Just like magic, no more bleeding! I was kind of nervous about the whole burning nose thing but it wasn't bad at all! The bleeding had been much worse and after almost 7 hours of it I think I would endured much worse to make it stop.

So there you go. The joys of being a heart patient with the flu. The doctors orders are very low activity and no nose blowing. I just have to ride this out for a few days and I'll be as good as new. Now does anybody know any good jokes? Got any funny nose one liners? I could use a good laugh. :)