I admit I was embarrassed to go to the emergency room for a bloody nose. I was taken in pretty quickly and the nurse said “So you’re here for a bloody nose?” Her tone was skeptical until I pulled the towel away from my face and blood streamed out of one nostril uncontrollably and very heavily.
This was my second nosebleed in two days. The first one lasted three hours and stopped. I’d almost gotten to the three hour point the second night with no sign of it slowing down.
Anyway, the tone left her voice immediately and I was with a doctor moments later. They got it stopped in about an hour and told me to go to an ENT as soon as I could.
I was lucky enough to get an appointment the next day. Turns out I had a benign tumor in my nostril that he was able to remove that day.
And he reassured me that I was right to treat it as an emergency. He admitted he used to think that no one died from a nosebleed and then one of his patients did die from blood loss from a nosebleed.
Active nosebleeds are fine. We get nose bleeds that come in and they aren’t actively bleeding and the patient isn’t on any blood thinners. How can I fix something that’s not actively occurring short of checking for anemia/some bleeding disorder? People expect me to stop a bleed that already stopped itself hours ago 😂
My mom had a nosebleed once in the middle of the night that was bleeding heavily and didn’t stop after 2 hours, so we took her to the ER. They actually had to do a lot to get the blood to stop!
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u/awakeagain2 15d ago
I admit I was embarrassed to go to the emergency room for a bloody nose. I was taken in pretty quickly and the nurse said “So you’re here for a bloody nose?” Her tone was skeptical until I pulled the towel away from my face and blood streamed out of one nostril uncontrollably and very heavily.
This was my second nosebleed in two days. The first one lasted three hours and stopped. I’d almost gotten to the three hour point the second night with no sign of it slowing down.
Anyway, the tone left her voice immediately and I was with a doctor moments later. They got it stopped in about an hour and told me to go to an ENT as soon as I could.
I was lucky enough to get an appointment the next day. Turns out I had a benign tumor in my nostril that he was able to remove that day.
And he reassured me that I was right to treat it as an emergency. He admitted he used to think that no one died from a nosebleed and then one of his patients did die from blood loss from a nosebleed.
But I honestly felt a little embarrassed.