4 Ways to Stop Severe Nosebleeds That Actually Work
I've Had Severe Nosebleeds For Over 20 Years — Here are 4 Ways I Put Them to A Halt
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Content Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of heavy bleeding.
As promised, here's how two tampons up my bloody nose landed me in the emergency room and how I met my current otolaryngologist.
One day, several years ago, I had a nose bleed so bad that I kept swapping super plus sized tampons in and out of my right nostril, it got to the point where blood started pouring out of my left nostril. With tampons rotating out of both nostrils I thought I finally got to a point where my nose bleed was almost over since the tampons weren't filling up as quickly. I was so wrong!
Next thing I knew I was seeing orange. Blood started coming out of my tear ducts and glazing over my eyes. Continuously flushing my eyes with water, I called a cab to get me to the emergency room. As I hovered over the sink next to my bed in the emergency room my now otolaryngologist introduced himself, told me to lay down, and that he would fix everything. And that he did.
He removed the tampons, irrigated a blood clot the size of half my palm out of my nasal cavity, cauterized my nose a couple of times, and then used the bipolar cautery method.
The bipolar cautery method is essentially a laser that zaps the blood vessel to restrict (or stop) the flow of blood. The bipolar cautery method is one that shouldn't be done often because if one too many are performed, septal perforation can occur.
Since that day I now only have to see him once to twice a year for a regular cauterization (mentioned earlier). So no more daily nosebleeds for this nose!
Ahead is the method he recommended I use for when I have light nosebleeds (bleeds that are light in flow and are shorter than five minutes).