Blessed to be Broken

I think it’s safe to say one of the scariest things a person may have to do is call for help. It’s a resignation that you no longer know what to do and with fear and trembling you call in the professionals.

It was a mostly uneventful day. Recovering from a nasty upper respiratory virus it was a day with less coughing, less head pressure, but still full of nose blowing. I actually felt pretty good compared to the last several days.

Mooser moose was outside enjoying what was left of daylight hours so I decided to hop into the shower. I rinsed off my freshly washed face, turned away from the water, and coughed. I saw red splatters appear on my white shower walls. The next thing I knew blood was gushing from my nose.

Immediately, I placed my thumb and forefinger on my nose and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. The blood said…oh, I got you, let me try another avenue and decided to try going down my throat. Gross.

I sat down, but I have to admit, I started to panic. I thought, I gotta get out of this shower and somehow dry myself off. Nobody ever said rationality was part of panic thinking. Have you ever tried to do dry yourself off one handed? No easy feat.

As if this wasn’t enough, because my body reacts to nervousness by wanting to relieve itself of all kinds of matter, I now had to go number 2. Are you freaking kidding me? Ok, forget drying off, we gotta go.

Again, not an easy thing to do when you’re attempting to stop blood gushing from your nose.

After about 10 minutes it’s safe to say, I’m a bit freaked out. So, I call my son. He’s my emergency contact. How blessed is he? I call. The phone doesn’t want to cooperate. I’m trying to call him. He’s trying to call me and he texts, “Stop trying to call!”

We connect and as I’m talking to him, my right eye starts looking red, it gets all blurry and tears of blood are now streaming down my face. I shout to my son, I’m calling 911. He says he’s on his way.

Ok, this is where it gets dicey. Do you remember I said I was taking a shower? You have to be naked to take a shower. I have to call 9-1-1, keep pinching my nose shut, hold something to stop the blood coming from my eye, and try to get something on.

I know, I know. 9-11 folks have seen plenty, but they’ve not seen my plenty. It gives me no comfort knowing they’ve seen it all. My all, is still, my all.

Through all manner of ninja style maneuvers I was able to get a shirt on. But the EMTs got here QUICK. I had no time to figure out the putting on of my pants.

With pants in hand, there they were coming in through the front door. Mooser moose was not happy about that, but it wasn’t time for him to claim his territory. They were not deterred by his “ferocious” yet muffled by toy in his mouth barking.

I put my pants on the couch, and rushed to turn a light on and then they were sitting me down to examine the situation. I was the situation, I was the situation that needed examining. It still blows my mind, I was the situation.

The 9-1-1 operator, bless his heart, had a hard time hearing me when I called. Sometimes my phone is spotty in certain areas of my house. He never caught the part of my eye bleeding.

That means the EMTs had no clue my eye was bleeding, they just thought I had a bloody nose. Thankfully, one of the EMTs was a woman. I don’t know, being half-naked amongst a bunch of men albeit professional men is not altogether comforting.

She took “control” of me and the scene. She had one of her co-workers grab me some gauze and told me to pinch my nose and had another person grab a trash can so I could use it as a blood spittoon.

They took my vitals and she asked if I had any pants she could help me put on. Forgetting where I had laid my pants, she followed me to my bedroom, then the bathroom, where she grabbed a towel I could sit on when I returned to the couch. It was then my V8 moment happened, and I remembered they were in the living room.

I hope she enjoyed the impromptu tour of my home. Oy vey.

Fully clothed, the professionals continued working while we waited for the ambulance folks to arrive.

The next thing I see is my son’s girlfriend walking through the door. Good to the ness but I think I saw a light shine on her when she walked in.

She assessed the situation and came over to check my vitals. Her take charge yet compassionate attitude kicked in and I got a beautiful glimpse of her years of training in action. She’s a nurse!

She helped get Moose inside and in his crate to keep him and all the others safe from his interrogating and incessant barking. Moose loves and trusts her so it was truly a God-send when Eden arrived on the scene.

The ambulance people arrived and a group of folks walked me to the gurney throne awaiting me outside. They strapped me in and loaded me into my medical chariot. They gave me fresh gauze for my nose and a vomit bag to spit the excess blood into. Vomit bags are the bomb! Who knew?!

We made small talk on the way to the ER and the paramedic made a joke about the water had to be pretty hard to cause this bloody mess. Ba-da-bum.

When we arrived at the ER, the doors of the ambulance opened and there stood my son and Eden. The look on his face was brave yet filled with relief and fear.

I couldn’t fix this for him. For a mom, that’s hard. I was the cause of that face and it was a gut punch. Lord knows it’s not what I would choose, but, this was happening, and I had to let God do the leading here.

They took me into the hospital and as we rolled down the hospital corridor I heard someone shout 3-20 and immediately Ephesians 3:20 popped in my brain and I proclaimed it out loud as we headed to the ER;

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

But there’s more to that promise and the verse that follows is just as powerful. Ephesians 3:21 proclaims:

“…to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.””

To HIM be the glory because He’s the One who can do immeasurably more.

Once I was situated in my curtain partitioned “room”, I was triaged in and given a pair of nose pinchers. My hands were ever so grateful I could finally give them a break from all the squeezing. It was about 9:00 pm and I’d been bleeding for about 45 minutes. Crazy!

Justin and Eden were authorized to come back and they sat with me. The doctor appeared and said he’d be back to take the pinchers off to assess the situation. The blood had finally subsided and Justin said the color was back in my face.

The doctor came back, removed the nose pinchers and we waited. No blood. He said he’d be back in 15 minutes to take a look up my nose to see if there was an issue behind this bloody mess.

I have to say the doctor was pretty underwhelmed by what I’d been through. I know they’ve seen and done a lot, but this was not underwhelming to me. I was in no way treated less than or unkind, but while this was “just” another bloody nose to him, this was scary for me.

On the flip side, maybe him being underwhelmed could allow for my anxious brain to calm down and register things were not as dire as my brain imagined. Clearly I’ve watched far too medical shows on tv. Stupid overly dramatic medical shows.

After the doctor determined there was no threat, he said I could go home and asked if I had any questions.

Being a recovering control freak, I wanted to know how I could prevent this from ever happening again. Like I have any control over any thing.

He said it would “probably never happen again”, and it was most likely a blown blood vessel from all the pressure, coughing, dryness, and blowing of the nose brought on by the illness I was recovering from.

Ok, let’s wrap this up.

Lauren Daigle sings a song called “Rescue.” If you’ve not heard it, and you’re reading this, you need to hear it. Seriously.

The chorus lyrics are:

“I will send out an army to find you
In the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you
I will never stop marching to reach you
In the middle of the hardest fight
It’s true, I will rescue you”

Y’all. I was in the middle of a bloody storm. And God sent an army to help me through. It was amongst all those people surrounding me that I realized once again how much we need one another.

We’ve all been given good gifts by our good God to help one another. Notice your gifts. Embrace them, and never ever let hate stop you from using what was always meant for good. Therein lies the beauty of humanity.

We’ve all only got this one life to live here on earth. It matters how we live. More importantly, YOU matter. You have been given the gift of life and with that comes great responsibility.

To the medical people who came to my aid, I can’t thank them enough. To my personal army, I can’t thank them enough. But in the in-between I can do what God calls me to do. Love others. Love God.

Easy? No. Impossible? No. Why? Because with Him, ALL things are possible. Key word being, “with”.

With that, I wish you a BIG, beautiful day full of love and laughter.