4/28/2025
Newsletter #759
The Crack of Dawn
Among other medications, I take blood thinners. This is just a consequence of getting old. Yesterday, I was raking leaves along the fence of my yard. There were leaves under a bush and as I was trying to get at them, I stuck my arm into the bush. The next thing I knew there was blood all over my hands and the rake handle, but I had no idea where it was coming from. Upon checking myself out, I found that there were long scratches along the front and back of my left arm that were presently gushing blood. They didn’t hurt and weren’t all that deep, but they were bleeding like hell and blood was getting all over everything. That was the end of raking. I went inside, got several sheets of paper towel, pressed it on the bloody scratches and stanched the bleeding. After a while I stopped bleeding, now surrounded by bloody pieces of paper towel. Meanwhile, my arm looked like it had been clawed by a bear.
A few days ago, I developed a pimple on the very end of nose. If I was in junior high or high school, I would have been mortified. Now, I could care less. I popped the pimple last night and it bled a little. A single tissue was sufficient to handle situation, and it stopped bleeding pretty quickly. Twenty minutes later, as I was getting ready for bed and I was straightening out the blanket and sheets, I rammed my hand into the windowsill, cutting the knuckle of my thumb and it began pouring blood. I put a tissue on it, sat down on the bed and waited for it sufficiently coagulate so I could go to bed.
First thing this morning I looked in the mirror and there was a scab on the pimple on my nose. Good. It was healing and would soon be gone. I took a shower. When I got out of the shower, I saw that my unhealed mauled arm was bleeding. I blotted the wounds and saw that the bleeding had mostly stopped, but not entirely. As I was just making coffee, I realized, once again, that there was blood all over my hands. As I looked around, I saw that there was blood all over the counter, the cutting board and the coffeemaker. I guess I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, knocked off the scab, and now the end of nose was pouring blood. Glancing down, I saw that I’d somehow knocked off the scab on my thumb and it was bleeding, too. Upon further inspection I found that my arm was also bleeding. There was blood all over everything and coming out of me in three places. I felt like Jack Woltz in The Godfather, waking up, first seeing blood all over his hands, looking confused, then pulling back the silk sheets to find a horse’s head in his bed.
Which puts me in mind of when I was hitchhiking across the country, way back in 1975 when I was seventeen. Back then I had bad allergies (which, over the course of time, went away). In the summer my nose was stuffed all the time. Or it was running. I was using Afrin nose spray, which is strong, but effective, stuff. It says on the bottle to not use it for more than three days. I had been using it several times a day for about two weeks.
It was a lovely, warm, summer day, with a brilliant blue sky. I was hitchhiking west on Interstate-80, just outside of Joliet, Illinois, where the state prison is located. I was standing at the bottom of an onramp with my thumb out. My nose completely stuffed. A road sign behind me said, “Prison area. Do not pick up hitchhikers.” I reasoned that this was probably a bad place to hitchhike. As I considered the idea of hiking up the road a way to get clear of the sign, I shpritzed Afrin up my nose, which quickly cleared it, allowing me to breathe. Ah, oxygen. A moment later a torrent of blood came gushing out of my nose. It wasn’t casually bleeding; it was like someone turned on the tap and it was really pouring out. Luckily, I had some napkins in my pocket and pressed them to my face. Having had many nose bleeds in the past, I didn’t panic, and I knew to lean my head back, then squeeze the sides of the bridge of nose, which often stopped the bleeding. But not this time. I had chemically fried the inside of my nose with too much Afrin. Before I knew it, the napkins were soaked and useless. Blood was now cascading down my chin and neck, on to the front of my shirt.
Grabbing my heavy backpack with one hand like it was nothing, while squeezing my nose with the other hand, I hustled up the onramp. Luckily, there was a Wendy’s at the top of the ramp. By the time I got to Wendy’s parking lot I was covered with blood like a horror movie. Tossing my backpack aside, I rushed inside.
When the ten or twelve patrons, all quietly sitting and eating their hamburgers, looked up and saw me drenched with blood, they all jumped to their feet and women began to scream. I held up my bloody hands, calmly explaining, “It’s just a nosebleed. Admittedly, a bad one. It’s OK. I haven’t been shot. I’m gonna be fine.” I turned to the horrified young employees and said, “Could I get a lot of napkins and some ice?” They ran and got them. I sat down, leaned my head back and applied the ice. The employees attempted to clean up what looked like a crime scene with napkins.
The nosebleed eventually stopped. I ordered a hamburger and fries, and they sympathetically gave them to me for free.