Picture this.
After a long but dry winter slumber, you’re washing your face over the bathroom sink to start off your morning routine. Still groggy, you space out into the running water, only to notice the turbulent flow tinged with droplets of dark red.
This is literally the worst time for a nosebleed! You run to the nearest box of Kleenex and desperately snatch up not one, not two, but a few tissues to cease the trickling loss of your life force, but the remaining droplets of hydrogen bonded H2O on your face tear through the soft, fibrous tissue polymers like a thousand degree knife through a trampoline.
I’m sure a regular knife would do the trick just fine.
Now, your only choice is to mar the pure, white towel you set aside to dry your face. Expecting freshly cleansed skin, the now scarlet-stained towel screeches out pain, suffering, death—
Okay, maybe that’s a little too far.
But you get the idea. To provide you with some New Historical context, that’s the story behind my Tuesday morning absence from Advanced Placement® Literature & Composition. Intriguing, right?
By the wise words of WebMD, bloody noses are “common.” About one in seven people in the U.S. will experience a bloody nose at some point in their lives (the ever-trusted WebMD, page 1 of 1). No way! That means 6 out of 7 people in this country won’t experience a nosebleed just once in their lives—that’s just over 280 million people, not a single nosebleed! You call that common? I must’ve had enough nosebleeds in my 17 years on this planet to make up for all of these people. Imagine living your entire life from birth to bloody-towel death without experiencing a nosebleed even once? I can’t!
Before I raise any further complaints, I should tell you a bit about myself. I have self-diagnosed myself with chronic epistaxis. Nasus sanguineus, in pseudomedical terms. While a normal somebody would need to suffer physical trauma, alcoholism, blood thinners, or cocaine (source) to induce the dreaded leakage of blood from their nasal cavity, I can simply blow my nose in the wrong place at the wrong time. Okay, maybe not that easily, but my friends and family can attest to my more often than usual bloody nose, so much so that a simple prolonged pause while I hold a tissue to my face can strike concern into the faces of those who know me best.
My nose has always been problematic. Like Josh Tong while breaking his 4:41 mile time, it’s constantly on the run. If there’s any record I’ll break in my lifetime, it’ll be for the number of consecutive Kleenex boxes used up in 24 hours.
According to my family doctor, I have a weakened blood vessel somewhere in the bridge of my nose. So the same old two most common triggers in just about everyone—well, one-sevenths of everyone, I guess—cause bloody noses for me: physical trauma and dryness. I’m just more sensitive. To me, physical trauma is blowing my nose too hard, and dryness is a winter night. Though I’ve suffered from much more than my fair share of bloody noses in life, to say I’m not a fan of them would be the understatement of the century.
So I’d like to impart two bits of wisdom by the time you finish reading this post to keep you from suffering my same fate.
Piece of Wisdom Number One: How to stop a bloody nose according to my Asian mother.
Step one, plug your nose with a rolled up half-tissue. Apply pressure like a normal person? No no no, that’s not failsafe. This way, you can still use both hands to flip through a textbook while taking notes or type out your blog post for AP Lit.
Additional tips:
- Splash cold water on your forehead. This helps… somehow… just trust me.
- Stick a pencil behind your ear on the same side as the nostril you’re bleeding from. This way, you can look like an architect and stop your bloody nose in style.
- If you happen to have a hand to spare, point it into the sky. Curse the atmosphere for its low moisture.
Piece of Wisdom Number Two: How to prevent bloody noses according to my personal experience.
Have you suffered from too many bloody noses? Are you tired of it? I present to you: Aquaphor, a humidifier, and saline nasal spray.
These three tools are key because they directly counteract the two main causes of bloody nose: dryness and frequently harsh nose blowing.
“Warnings: for external use only.” Go ahead and disregard that on your Aquaphor packaging. Aquaphor as advertised is perfect for dry, cracked, or irritated skin, just what the inside of your nose needs. Apply a little before bed to ensure moisture is locked into your nose overnight.
A humidifier! This is self-explanatory.
Saline nasal spray, a dream for those with clogged noses. This remedy will instantly alleviate your mucus problems like a magical artifact.
These precautions have helped me reduce my nosebleed frequency from thrice a week to a couple times a month, and I hope they’ll help you too!
According to WebMD’s failsafe statistics, this blog post will most definitely only be useful to about one-sevenths of you readers. Hopefully for the rest, my suffering has at least been of some meager entertainment. I’m jealous of all of y’all’s perfect noses.
For the other one-sevenths of you out there, follow these tips, and stay safe, kids!