Saturday, February 20, 2010

A Little Midnight Excitement ...

Not what you might be thinking, I'm assuring you!

Last night, Josh and I were volunteering at the Encores and More consignment sale in Franklin. We had both agreed we wanted to shop early and found that we could shop on Thursday if we volunteered a six hour shift. We signed up for consignor pre-sale night because we wanted time to pass quickly!

The night was pretty fun and it was really enjoyable working alongside Josh. About fifteen minutes before we were done, Josh said his nose was stopped up and I told him to go back to the bathroom to blow it. He was gone a while, but I figured he was whiling his time away until it was time to go. Then I got a phone call from Josh telling me that his nose was bleeding and wouldn't stop. I went back to the bathroom and it looked like someone had slaughtered a pig back there. I had a brief moment of freaking out and then got tissue, told Josh to pinch his nose and started to clean up blood from everywhere -- the counter, the floor, the sink. Yuck. We couldn't get it to stop and it was literally dripping from his nose. I called Kevin, got him to look up on the internet how to stop a bloody nose. Finally, we decide we are going to have to take him somewhere.

When we went back up front, there was a paramedic also volunteering and she sat with Josh and talked him "down" (as he was really starting to freak out) and worked on getting it to provide pressure to his nose to try to stop the bleeding. Thirty minute later, it hadn't stopped totally so she said we should go the the ER and see if they needed to cauterize it.

We arrived at Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital ER at 12:30. After going through triage and accounting, we were told we had arrived on the "busiest night of the year" (great) and to go back to the waiting room and they would call us. The clock ticked and ticked and TICKED by. Josh's nose continued to bleed and we went through TONS of tissue as he continue to put pressure on it. He finally fell asleep around 2:30 and I suppose at that point it might have stopped bleeding (almost three hours after it started). At 3:00, I woke him up and asked if he wanted to just go home and we'd see his doctor later in the day. He mumbled, "No" that he still needed to see the doctor. FINALLY, at 3:30, they called us back. The doctor looked in Josh's nose and said it was "irritated" and that it didn't need to be cauterized because it had "stopped bleeding" (uh, yeah, right ...). He was in the room for at most 2 minutes and went out to write a prescription for Afrin.

We made it home at 4:30 and headed off to bed where Josh stayed until 2:00 p.m. and I stayed until 12:45.

Today he has been in good spirits with no nose bleeds. I'm hopeful it was just a one time thing.

3 comments:

Lindsey Carney said...

Maria, how do you find out about all these great consignment sales? E-mail me lindsey@treasure2farm.com or facebook me, I'm very interested.

Glad Josh's nose finally stopped bleeding and you got a little rest!

multimom said...

Maria,

So sorry to hear about Josh's nose bleed. Rick is prone to those and two of our kids are, also, so I'm familiar with that scenario! Glad it finally stopped and he seems okay now. I'll cross my fingers for you and hope this was a one-time thing! Hugs to all!

Ellen

Khakismum said...

Aw, poor Josh. Poor mommy too! Nose bleeds are scary to the 'victim'. Just for future reference, get and ice bag and put it on the back of his neck. We found out this little gem on a airplane coming back from Australia when Kathryn sprouted a nose bleed out of nowhere. We called the attendents for ice to put on the bridge of her nose and they said put it on the back of the head. It worked - fast! I guess with the dry air on a plane they get them often enough they know what they are doing. Glad Josh's calmed down and was nothing major.