It could only happen to me

The story you are about to read is going to sound outrageous, but every word of it's true! At the moment things were very serious and no photos were taken, but I did go back and get photos, after the fact, to help your imagination.

Sunday was wonderfully sunny and warm, in the lower 60s, extremely unusual for this time of year and we were thankful to see it! My daughter and her family wanted some photos done - it's been far too long since we shot them.

After shooting some photos downtown, we decided to head to one of our favorite historical parks - trying to avoid the mud from all the melt off and the ugly trees, still without leaves. . .Tristan was enamored with the train car and it was hard to pull him away, we got many photos of the train car, the nearby tracks, Addy with flowers (cut flowers mama brought with them), porch swing setting, and so on and so on.

We were winding down when the little green trailer, sitting on the porch, called to us. We promised the babies some lunch after just a few more photos. Because of where the sun was at the time we were there I set my camera aside and held the reflector for Dennis.

The reflector we have is a 3-4' circle. To hold it, my arms are out from my body and I was standing there on the right of the trailer, near the white light pole, at the edge of the building. The wind picked up and it became harder to hold the reflector. Side note: What you can't tell from this angle is that there isn't a lot of porch next to the trailer.

So, the wind picked up, I struggled to keep control of the reflector. About the time I thought I had it made a gust pushed the reflector and me towards the edge of the porch. I let go of the reflector because it felt like it was going to pull me off the porch (they're like huge sails) and I was trying to stay on the porch. Reflector went rolling, Dennis chased after it.

The momentum was already there and I kept falling. I landed on my feet, bent forward, arms flailing trying to stay out of the bushes. But it didn't work. One of these spikes went up my left nostril. Immediate ouch! I squeezed my nose - Dennis asked if I was ok, I said no - Britney asked if I was ok, I said I think so but could I have a kleenex. The whole time I'm thinking: a branch just went up my nose! How far did it go? Did it poke my brain? People die by getting things shoved too far up their nose! Am I going to die? No, now calm down, Lisa, look at the twigs, they're little, you're going to be ok, if it poked your brain you'd probably already be dead. It hurts but that will pass, maybe a little nose bleed but no big deal.

So I asked Britney for a tissue. As she placed it in my open hand I positioned it quickly under my nose, and ever so quickly switched from my pinching-nose hand to the hand with the kleenex. But in that fraction of a second. . .

Blood poured form my nostril. Not dripped, but poured like you were pouring something into a cup.

Keep in mind, I took these photos two days after the incident. The wood really soaked it up.

Ok, back to the story, so, I have never, ever, ever bled like that and I was pretty startled by it. I was staying bent forward, nose pinched and not about to change kleenex, thinking of nothing but pinching. Oh, I forgot to say that blood soaked one of my hands too, so when Dennis looked up he saw blood-soaked kleenex, blood running down hand and the blood on the porch and he says we need to go to hospital.

I say no. I say I think I will be ok but I do start walking to the car. About this time I feel crap in my throat and I cough into another kleenex and see blood - well that scares me and I think a hospital is probably a good idea - I don't know how far it poked after all.

About the time I get in the car, and all the way to the hospital, I start getting gagged on the blood pouring out of my mouth. At times I would literally get a pulse of blood slamming into my little, uvula, and gagging me, I would have to spit it out. I went through every kleenex and napkin in the car, soaking them all with the blood from my mouth, still keeping pressure on my nose the entire trip to the hospital, which as luck would have it was on the other side of town! I was getting ready to ask Dennis for his shirt as I was running out of places to put the blood.

Dennis did great btw, he got us safely there even while running red lights after a short pause. At one point he wanted the phone - I have no idea why. I couldn't talk, it made the blood worse, but at one point I asked where we were and when he told me I knew we were about halfway there and I replied, Ok, that's ok, just hurry - I was pretty panicked by this point because the blood was spurting out, in my mind with my heart beat, in bursts and I was really scared I was going to bleed out. I saw all the bloody tissues in the floor mat, and knew it kept coming and I wondered how much blood you could lose before you passed out. But I decided it must be more than this and hopefully he would get me to the ER before that point and surely if I lost too much they'd just give me an Iv and all would be well - if we could get the bleeding stopped.

Lucky for me once Dennis gets us safely to the hospital they take my immediately back. I guess looking like something from a horror movie has that hurry effect on medical personnel. lol They wheeled my back and the bleeding had lessened enough already that I could speak without spewing. I kept pressure on my nose for the next 20 minutes while they asked questions and got me ready for the doc.

The doc was very kind. He walked in asking about my "bizarre" accident and I knew we were going to get along. First thing they had to do was get the bleeding stopped so they could look in my nose. We finally switched to gauze for my nose and I threw the old tissue away. The blood had lessened, whew, no more pouring forth. Then doc took over holding the nose. He squeezed really tight and we chatted while I felt a little light headed.

After 15 minutes of him crushing my nose he looked in. He had to swab away blood from time to time but he wasn't able to find anything that needed cauterized - thank goodness! He called in an ear/nose/throat doc to double check things. There was numbing stuff on gauze shoved up there, then he thoroughly examined and assured me that my brains were still in tact and I would survive.

Yay! So, yeah, it ends up that everything is fine. I have still been having some sinus headaches but that's getting better each day too. It was an extremely scary situation at the time, but it all worked out fine. And as the doc says, at least it wasn't my eye.  Who knew photography could be such a dangerous profession.  It's ok to laugh, I still keep laughing over it. Things like this only happen to me. :0)