Hmmm

My nose just started bleeding. Suddenly blood was dripping everywhere for no reason at all and for a moment I wondered if I was having a stroke.

Then I remembered how when I was a kid, every single afternoon and every single night (overnight) my nose would start spontaneously bleeding. This started when I was about 6 and continued for the better part of five years. Thankfully my teachers knew this was an issue so when my nose started bleeding they just continued on their lesson/class as I raced into the coatroom sink or the bathroom until the bleeding stopped. Sometimes the amount of lblood was downright scary. I remember my mom waking me up for school one morning and my entire pillow was soaked in drying blood from overnight.

Mom tried. She took me to severAl doctors. The first one said I must be picking my nose. “I’m not picking my nose,” I said truthfully, but the doctor insisted that I must be. So mom took me to a second doctor. “It’s dried skin,” this doctor said. “You have dry skin up there and when it cracks it bleeds.” So he prescribed me lotion. That didn’t really help either.

The only real cure was age and time. When I was around 11 the nosebleeds for the most part stopped, and I think ever since that time I’ve suffered no more than the average person when it comes to nosebleeds. This morning’s gush was a rarity anymore.

But for me this really underscores how uninformed we (including doctors) all were in the 1970s. Because he wAs a kid (me) who ate a LOT but was grossly underweight, was the shortest kid in claSs, who had awful rashes his legs and some psoriasis, had a crossed-eye, had a thyroid issue that tormented him twice per yeAr, had crippling knee and back pain, and who broke his arm by throwing a ball thanks to a cyst in his arm, and no one thought, “Hey, this kid might be battling something systematic.” Which it turned out I was and wouldn’t be diagnosed/recognized until I got idipathic lung disease at age 43.

I don’t blame anyone. Medicines just hadn’t advanced enough in the 1970s for this to be recognized. But it does give me a little bit of compassion for myself. Especially since I took a lot of ribbing for being undersized and walking pigeon-toed and having nose bleeds.

I’m grateful the world of medicine has advanced so much. It’s unfortunate that capitalists exploit all this for profit but at the same time I’m grateful the ability to treat things has advanced so much.