"Bloody Nose"

Once again I must congratulate NHS staff for their understanding and faultless care on my recent, unplanned, visit to their place of work. Friday, there I was one minute (10:50am) doing stuff in the garden when the sun got in my eyes and made me sneeze - violently 5 or 6 times. The next thing my nose is running with blood. So, following good first aid guidelines, apply heavy pressure to the nose just below the bridge and expect to carry on doing stuff in 15 minutes or so. Two hours, and a bucket of blood (Jill has a gruesome picture) later, she returns from shopping trip and immediately nags me for blowing my nose too hard. As you can imagine, I couldn't get a word in edgeways - nag, nag, nag, nag, nag !!! She attempts to stem the flow for some time but then admits defeat and calls 999. I couldn't believe it - calling an ambulance for a nose bleed, I'll never live it down. First a paramedic arrives with blues and twos blaring and neighbours all hanging from their windows. He tries for the next hour but fails to stop the flow and calls for an ambulance on code Hot2. Which, I'm guessing, means if you have anyone dying, deal with them before this idiot. So they plug my nose (they don't want blood in their nice clean ambulance) and instruct me to carry on pinching hard. In A&E they eventually stop it bleeding, after 4 hours, by shoving a 6 inch hard tampon right up my nostril - thought they were going to poke my eye out and it hurt like hell. I'm not kidding when I say that it was so difficult to get it in, I thought they would resort to whacking it up there with a mallet. Then they said it would swell and I would have to stay in overnight but I played on the sympathy of the doc saying I didn't want to miss my friend's birthday do and, anyway, my wife's doing mussels for me tea. In the ward doc says he will check it in an hour or so and pull out the tampon (it too hurt like hell). If it has stopped bleeding, he will cauterise. If not he will shove another 6 inch tampon up there and keep me in overnight. Fortunately it had stopped so he proceeded to shove burning sticks up my nose. Who says the NHS aren't the gentle caring people we all love. Back home around 9pm. Thank you to all in A&E, ambulance crews and Easton ward, I think you are all just great.