This is a totally gross topic.  My apologies.  But the reality at our house is that we are way, way too familiar with bleeding through the nose, thanks to Superkid.

Superkid tends to have a lot of nosebleeds.  Part of this is due to the fact that she has to take a blood-thinning medication to protect her artificial heart valve from blood clots.  And part of it is due to the fact that she has a small artery a little too close to the surface of her left nostril.  (For which there isn’t a simple fix, due to Superkid’s other medical conditions.)

The combination isn’t exactly pretty–especially when her medication is at therapeutic levels.  (Read: when her blood is as thin as her cardiologists want it to be.)  Believe you me, I have the stained sheets, towels, t-shirts, and carpet to prove that.  We have seen some pretty dreadful nosebleeds.  One of Superkid’s worst lasted for 3+ hours, and dripped like a faucet the entire time.  Naturally, that one occurred at 10 o’clock at night while Bionic Man was out of town on business, and involved a late-night trek to the children’s hospital ER with Superkid, Lily, and Lily’s oxygen tank in tow.  The nosebleed stopped as soon as we walked into the ER.  I am not kidding.

And, up until recently, that was the best cure for nosebleeds we knew.  Seriously, we’ve had three nosebleeds worthy of trips to the ER, and all of them stopped upon entry. Kind of an expensive and time-consuming cure, don’t you think? [Read more...]