Pull the String!

Someone at my work reminded me of this story, and dammit, it would have been absolutly perfect to tell this tale on Halloween! It's weird. it's spoooky. It's true. And it's very much like a henwhey.

You see, I am cursed with extreme hypertension. Was born with it, and someday, it may shorten my life. I have the blood pressure of a nervous fruit bat, plumetting thousands of feet into a hedge trimmer. I see it as a balance of life. I've had so many wonderful experiences and i've met some truely special people. It's a good trade off. I mean as opposed to possibly be a retarded bat.

But one day, it's was almost time to pay the piper a bit early.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was so glad to be home from an exhausting week at work. talking to my sister online, when I felt I had a runny nose. Being a "guy" I proceeded to wipe my nose with the back of my hand, and get on to the typing. But I felt warmer than normal. thats when I looked at my hand, and it was covered with blood. I looked in a mirrored surface on my drawing table. A bloodly smear was across my face. And my nose felt like it was plugged up like a cold just about to loosen.

When I tilted my head down, thats when I desended into my own personal hell. It was as if a faucet opened and a funnel of blood came out of my nose. Constant. And it didn't stop. I immedietly did the right thing...wiped away enough plasma from my keyboard and typed to my sister while trying to invent the nose turniquet, that I'm bleeding, what do I do?

She said to keep my head back. So I run start to run to the bathroom, or at least into the door frame while I'm choking. That wasn't the best idea. And I try for "bad idea" number two: I'll pinch my nose shut and just wait.

An hour later, I'm still an open spiggot, and the bathroom looks like a grisly murder scene and I failed in my attempt to hide the corpse.

Thirty minutes later, I'm at the hospital, with a shopping bag full of bloody tissues under my nose. Oh, and heres a hospital flash fact: If you don't want to sit in the purgatory that is the waiting room for what could be hours, carry a sack of bloody kleenex. It's like a "fastpass" to the front of the que.

Sitting in the examination room, I have a team of nurses try to comprehend my clotted nasil talk. And my guest star doctor, actually a PA, so it's not a real doctor, swings by every few minutes to poke his unshaven head in the room and say...I shit you not...

"You're gonna die, y'know! You're gonna die!"

I'm thinking he didn't show up for "bedside mannor" class. I guess that explains why he's a PA and not a doctor too. Maybe it was some sort of new tough love therapy. Maybe he was the local grim reaper from union 12? Perhaps he just broke up with his girlfriend, or he was hormonal? Either way, thank you for that professional opinion.

I've got tubes in me, glycerine in my veins, and finally a few professionals hovers about me. I could only guess is that if I did die here in this room, the press would be bad. All the while, Dr. Death is back telling me to order that pine box, and probably making plans for my body parts. It doesn't help that he read in my file that I worked at an office supply store, and now he's butting his noggin between the real docs to ask me stupid techinal support questions about his computer problems. I'm a deas man walking, I couldn't care less about his computer.

So what did the marvels of medical science do for me to get me over my affliction? the got this silver scoopy applicator and stabbed it into my sinus, then they forced, yes, forced, a rolled up cotton packing up there with a small cord hanging out to stop the flow.

Thats right, ladies. I got a tampon shoved up my nose. And they taped the string against my right cheek. I begged to have them kill me now, or at least get a week off of work so I could hide in a closet.

And let em tell you, whats worse that having that put in, was having that getting pulled out a week later but a doctor that never did that before.

His first question to me: "..so...er...I just, pull the string?"