3) My Mini-epidemic of Nose Bleeds

February 11, 2020
Tuesday

Living with HHT: One of the reasons to expand my blogging into writing about HHT was related to the recent outbreak of nose bleeds I had over a recent week (February 1st - 6th).  As in the past these outbreaks usually start with a somewhat significant nose bleed (1/7/20); then stall; and then become a significant outpouring a week or three later.

At times I have seemed to have an outbreak around January, when "cedar fever" is prevalent in Austin.  Cedar and Cats, these days, are about all I am still allergic to.  I can successfully stay away from cats but not cedar.  When the mountain cedar is blooming in Austin, it seems half of the city is out sick or appear to be crying. I plan ahead and start taking Claritin. But of course that dries out my nose and sometimes it leads to my little nasal telangiectasias exploding. small vascular malformations that appear as 1-2 mm red spots on the the lining of the nose (see telangiectasia on the Cure HHT page).   

So, anyway, starting on February 1st I had a pretty good nosebleed for me and luckily I got it mostly stopped by the time I had to see a counseling client at my office. My nose did drip once during the counseling session which surprised the client and I was able to blame the quick interruption on dry nostrils from treating the cedar fever.  No further trouble until the next morning.

A flood of blood: The next morning I had two nosebleeds over the course of the morning: one early, which I stopped pretty quickly, and one later that started as a gusher and then trickled off to a little brook of a thing for an hour or so.  My usual treatment of choice for these is to begin carrying around my Neo-Synephrine and a folded up paper towel.  When a nose bleed starts, as quickly as I notice it, I spray that nostril once and then stuff a paper towel cone up against the spot and hold it there.  In the literature they say hold for at least 5 minutes and that seems about normal to me, although if one of my bleeds gets going before I can do my stopping strategy, it can be a long downhill slide.  One thing I have found that is really important for me is to stay VERY still with my head in a balanced space for the whole time of the bleed (My mother had HHT and I recall that she used to lie down and put a "nosebleed plug" either in her nostril or up under her lip). Lying down doesn't usually work at all for me because it is hard to keep blood from going down the back of my throat when I lie down. WARNING: Gross story --> I do recall that once, up in Colorado, my nose bled so long I had to go to sleep I was so worn out. When I woke up, there was a long string of dried clotted blood going down the back of my throat that I reached back in and cut with a pair of scissors.

I try to balance my head so that as the blood flow slows, it neither drips down the back or out the front. One of my biggest challenges during longer bloody noses is to avoid sucking down any dried nasal viscous colloidal mucus (snot) because it is mostly coagulated blood that is clotted and if you suck it out the bleeding will start again (usually furiously).

By the way, I am not a doctor, so don't read any of this as medical advice. It is only the musings of an old HHT survivor.  One thing to note. I have heard a number of times that HHT is NOT a blood clotting disorder, so I guess we can all be happy about that.

Anyway, after the Sunday morning episodes, I had several on Monday evening, Tuesday evening as I was going to bed, and by Wednesday I had gotten an appointment with one of my doc's PA's to get some cauterizing because my laser doc didn't think he could get the laser way up where I was describing where I thought my spot is.  More about the day at the clinic in next post.