One Month Later and The Real Bloody Nose Story

Today marks one-month post-surgery. I'm still glad I did it although there have been a few days that I have not been glad. 

The headaches are better. I only have about one per day and generally, the pain level is much lower than it used to be. I'll take it. But why am I still having them? That's the question we still need an answer to. I did have a friend suggest that I could be having rebound headaches. I went cold turkey off my Tylenol and ibuprofen and two days later I had the bloody nose from hell. I mentioned it to my doctor and he said he didn't think that was the cause so I'll never know. 

My nose is still tender and painful but I'm allowed to blow it again (who thought I would be excited about that?). I am still taking the migraine medicine Gabapentin but I don't think it is working and I hate it. I'll admit that I'm now paranoid to take Tylenol or Ibuprofen and during the day, I often try to wait the headache out before I take one Naproxen and that seems to be all I need. 

I'm still on my anxiety medicine but even that seems to be not needed so I'll be speaking to my Dr. about weaning off of that in the next few months and see how it goes. That is another story for another day.

I did get some congestion earlier this week and on the days I took some Sudafed all day, I didn't have any headaches. The three days I didn't think I needed to take the sudafed, I had an off-the-charts headache at work and then two fairly bad ones over the next two days, similar to pre-surgery. I am now wondering what is up with that? I did try different allergy medicines pre-surgery so I'm not sure. I have both a neuro and an ENT follow-up in May.  That's where we are at. 

I'm so appreciative of those who have reached out to check on me and/or have prayed for me. I feel like in between headaches, I'm almost back to my old self. When I have a headache, it is pretty obvious. Unless you know I'm struggling with this, you might not even think there was anything wrong with me:)

Because this is my journal, I wanted to make sure to document what really happened that morning I had a bloody nose. Trigger alert - If you don't like blood and gross stuff, don't read the rest of the story. 

I woke around 3:15 after coughing for much of the night. I went to the bathroom and gently blew my nose and had a gush of fresh blood. I went to the other room so as to not wake Ben and I lay on the couch pinching my nose to get it to stop. I slept very little for the next several hours propped up on some pillows on the couch pinching my nose.. 

I made my way back to the bedroom around 7am and told Ben what was happening. I told him we needed to call my Dr. and ask what to do. The doctor on call told me to try some nose spray. I leaned over the sink and tried to spray it up but the blood was running so fast, there ended up being a huge bloody mess in the bathroom, it looked like a crime scene with all the bloody towels. I was told that if in an hour it hadn't stopped, I would need to go to the ER. As I cleaned up my face, I thought it was strange that there was blood above my eye and on the side of it but I wiped it clean and went downstairs. 

Drew came over and he and Ben offered me a priesthood blessing. I was told that the bleeding would stop that day. This brought me much relief as I was starting to panic. At the ER, I actually got back surprisingly quickly. The triage doctor gave me a clip to hold my nose shut and told me I just needed to plug it in the right place. I may have rolled my eyes but I put that clip on my nose and went back to the waiting room. In there, I began to choke and cough up some of the blood. I didn't realize that as it was coagulating in my nose, it was dripping down my throat and gagging/choking me. 

I got back to a room within a minute of my choking issue and as I plugged my nose shut, more and more blood would choke me and I felt like my head was going to explode because of the amount of blood. They also told me not to swallow it because then I would become nauseous and make things worse. Too late. There was too much. I tried to keep my head down and let the blood run out my mouth but it was causing too much coughing and choking again. 

They tried squirting a medication up my nose and that didn't work either. As I sat there plugging my nose, I finally had to close my eyes and "rest" from all the panic of not being able to breathe. By "rest," I meant I wanted everything to end because I think in the back of my mind, I was going to die from choking on my blood or running out of it. 

He asked Ben for the number of my ENT so he could call and ask what needed to be done. Ben later told me that as I lay there with my eyes closed, the blood had nowhere to go so it started coming out of my right eyeball. It got all swollen big and when the Dr. touched it, the blood went everywhere, down my face and neck and all over the bed. That explained the blood around my eye before we even left for the hospital earlier. 

At this point, the Dr. realized that something needed to be done. The risk of stuffing something up my nose and ruining all the work from the surgery was a big risk and this was definitely the last resort as he was very nervous about doing that. 

When the blood started coming out my eye, the Dr. decided it was time to plug up the nose with a tampon-like thing that had an expander on it. It was about 3" long. There was no time to wait for the doctor to give permission, it was a risk we agreed needed to be taken. The pain of having that stuffed up my nose was so intense, that I cried out loud for several moments before the procedure was done. It was so painful to my nose still tender from surgery and the fact that it was HUGE to begin with and then they added air to expand it. 

I remember being embarrassed that I was being so dramatic about it but I truly thought I was living an episode of Chicago Med. I was confident they were going to have to put me out and do some drastic procedure on me only to discover that I had some rare disease that I was going to die from. Then, Dr. Halstead would come up with some random cure and I would go home the next day.

Anyway, I had to keep that tube up my nose for almost two days. My ENT called me on Monday morning and told me that he would like it in there for three days. I told him I couldn't take it for two more days and he relented and gave me an appointment on Tuesday morning first thing. 

At my appointment on Tuesday, he removed the tube, and much to my surprise, no more bleeding. He went in and cauterized the spot that had been bleeding. It was the air pocket he had fixed in the surgery. Thankfully, the ER doctor did the right thing to stop the bleeding and there was also no damage to my nose. I did get some of the cauterization liquid on the outside rim of my nose and it looked like I had a giant bugar coming out for a week or so. I was just happy the problem was fixed. 

If I ever have a bloody nose again, it will be too soon. That was one of the most traumatic events of my life and I'd rather have 8 more kids than go through that again.