Black Friday Mayhem

*** Gross out alert ***

Friday morning I got up to brave the crowds of shoppers driven insane by the prospect of "Door-Busters." Ginger, not being motivated by any of the sales, decided to stay home and enjoy the comfort of the bed while I was running around in the cold. I got a bench top grinder for $20 and some allen wrenches and socks half off.

I got home and Ginger was still hibernating, so I thought I would wake her with the smells of a sizzling breakfast. I got everything out and then had a sneezing fit. I felt a tickle in my nose and recognized it as a nose bleed starting.

A little history for you here, I normally get two or three nose bleeds a year and they consist of a few drops that a wad of tissue paper takes care of.

So sensing the eminent bleeding I got a paper towel and plugged up my right nostril. The plug immediately soaked through, so I pinched of my right nostril with my fingers, this caused the blood to start coming out of my left nostril. At this point I headed into the bathroom to keep the dripping blood contained to the sink, pinching both nostrils closed. I stood leaning over the sink trying to keep any dripping blood contained I started to notice my right eye was feeling funny, I looked in the mirror and saw blood coming out of the corner of my eye. The hemorrhage had filled up my sinuses to the point where the blood was looking for an outlet and found one in my eye socket. I was starting to get worried at this point, so I tilted my head back so the blood could run down my throat instead of out of my eye picking the lesser of the two evils. About every other breath I would have to spit out a mouthful of blood.

I did this for a couple of minutes with no ebb in the flow when I decided that assistance might be required. I knew Ginger had her cell phone on her nightstand so I called her up with my phone and said "I need your help, I am in the bathroom downstairs." She came downstairs to find me in the bathroom looking like a victim of Ebola, with blood running out of my nose, mouth and eye. After a couple minutes of discussing and still no slowing in the flow of blood I asked her to drive me to the emergency room. At this point I have to comment on how quickly Ginger came around from being dead asleep to being ready to hit the road.

While she was getting her glasses and purse I grabbed a roll of paper towels and a Home Depot Homer Bucket to keep my mess contained in the car. As Ginger was rushing me to the ER the bleeding finally started to slow. By the time I got checked into the ER and saw a doctor it had pretty much stopped. The doctor looked around inside my nose and cauterized it with a silver nitrate stick. With everything under control we got released from the ER and headed home.

The picture below is what the bathroom sink looked like when we returned from the hospital an hour and a half later. If I recall correctly I covered the sink three times over with blood before I called Ginger for help. I managed to get blood on everything but the pure white hand towel much to Ginger's amazement.

Ginger also took a picture of the inside of the 5 gallon Home Depot bucket (it is orange so the blood doesn't show up that well) before it got cleaned out. Notice the nice juicy blood clot perched atop the wad of paper towels, this came out of my mouth after being dislodged from my sinuses.