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In today's issue of up late and can't sleep, instead of venturing down the wikipedia highway, I got a nosebleed.

Now me and nosebleeds, we got us a history. I just get 'em. Always have; always will. I have had hundreds of them, but a few of them have been quite memorable.

In seventh grade, I had a nosebleed that did not stop for an entire day. Well, about 13 hours. I went to the hospital, where they a) gave me a drug called cocaine to stop the bleeding (they said it was "a different salt" than the "regular" cocaine), b) diagnosed me as having blood vessels close to the surface of the inside of my nose, and that I was "just going to get nosebleeds from time to time", and c) pulled out such a disgustingly long and thick serpentlike glob of blood and snot from my nose that I almost vomit thinking about it even now.

In my early teens, I got a nosebleed from the wind resistance while riding a bike down the street behind our backyard. Sam and I were riding bikes down to his house, and I noticed the bleeding when I got to the bottom of the hill. I remember Sam being quite amazed when I showed up at his house, right behind him, face streaming in blood.

In my adult life, I don't have as many memorable ones (thank God), and although they do tend to occur more frequently in winter months, times of lower relative humidity, or when I excessively or violently pick my nose, they mostly come without warning and without demonstrable cause. The only pattern I can deduce from the whole business is that, like an earthquake, if it's happened once recently, it's more likely to happen again fairly soon. Over the years, I've developed a fairly standard method for dealing with them, that has been fairly successful:

1. dry hands and face
2. blow nose
3. tightly pack nostril with strong (if possible) toilet paper (1 sheet of Charmin Strong works best)
4. wait ~5 minutes, repeating packing step if necessary
5. blow nose again, cleanup

Usually one iteration of the whole process is all that's needed. This morning it was not. The packings were soaked through in less than a minute. I resorted to pinching the fleshy part of my nose shut and sticking my face under running cold water for about 10 minutes. It worked, finally, after I had spent a total of 1/2 hour on this nosebleed, which is longer than I have spent on any in quite some time.

Joy.

Words for the day: Epistaxis and Rhinotillexomania.