February 21, 2021: Liz and I roll in at the Baylor Scott & White Medical Center Emergency Room near our house at about 6 a.m. with my nose bleeding like a faucet. Its been gushing and oozing all night, with me as it's reluctant vessel, trying to get a little sleep as I maintain a perpendicular balance: not too far forward and not at all leaning backwards into the pillows.
Today's state began the evening before, first as a nuisance in my right nostril and then, once that one had a life of it's own, my left nostril joined in. Even though these kinds of spells are infrequent in my experience of epistaxis (I use the formal term here respectfully), they become, at some point, kind of a crisis where I begin to think I will not be able to stop them by myself so I must find a medical professional who knows about HHT to intervene.
For those of us who have endured HHT, we are usually wary of doctors who really know very little about HHT, although I am finding, over the years that there are more and more docs who DO know something about HHT. "The overall prevalence is estimated to be approximately 1-2 cases per 10,000 population" The doctor who worked on me at the ER, Louis Richman did happen to know about HHT, and even knows of Dr. Levy, who has used laser on some of my telangiectases.
Dr. Richman ran some labs and then packed my nose with a technique that has improved since I first had my nasal passage packed in Kerrville a number of years ago. Watch a short video showing the process on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i8qIZ-G1GM . In my case, Dr. Richman left the packing (one for each nostril) for 15 to 20 minutes and then removed them.
For the next couple days I got mini nosebleeds throughout the day, which is par for the course, BUT worries me just the same: "Did that doc help me? Is this going to go gushy on me again?" An for the few days afterwards I usually feel worn out (Nurse Connie suggested it is from general loss of blood). During my "taking it easy" couple days, my mind wanders around my long term experiences with HHT and it comes to me that just about a year ago I had a cluster of big nosebleeds...look it up...and there is the early entry in this blog (#3).
Now that we have both our vaccines for the Covid-19 pandemic we are slightly more mobile and can again start planning a trip to Dallas to visit with Dr. Battaile at Southwestern Med Center's HHT Center for more testing on the connection between my HHT and the Liver Cirrhosis.
No comments:
Post a Comment