Speed Bumps...

You know how it is...you're cruising along and think all is well and BAM...speed bump.  Well, this week was one of those for us.  As you can tell from the recent posts on the blog, we were out of town the entire first week of the month.  Now granted, we did lots of nature studies while at my parents' house, but we really didn't do any real school work.  So, after a weekend of trying to unpack and do laundry, we jump right back into things this past Monday.  Monday night I get a really bad nose bleed.  It lasts for about 20 minutes, but does eventually stop.  Same thing happens again late Tuesday afternoon.  Wednesday, with no warning what so ever, my nose starts bleeding again.  This time however, it won't stop.  Now we're not talking about a gentle, slow nosebleed, we're talking about a gusher.  After dealing with this for around two hours, and at the point where I start to feel faint, I decide its time to go to the emergency room.  My husband is on the road from Atlanta, I have no other immediate family here, and all but one of my friends in the neighborhood are out of town.  Thankfully, my next door neighbor was able to rush home and drive me to the ER and stay with me the entire time.  Aren't friends great?  I owe her big time!

Talk about embarrassing!  I'm 40 years old and have never, ever been to the ER for myself.  First time I have to go, its for something crazy like a nosebleed.  Anyway, after sitting there for a couple of hours, having lots of  tests run, they finally got it to stop.  No idea why it started, what's causing them or anything.  I did get to go home with some sort of nose spray that is supposed to stop any further nose bleeds.  Which ironically, is available at any pharmacy over the counter.  Wish I'd known about that!  I did find out that I'm healthy and according to their tests, there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.  Go figure.  If you have nosebleeds, I highly recommend trying NeoSynephrine.  Works great!  It constricts the blood vessels.  Doesn't say that on the box, but that's what it does and it worked last night when my nose started bleeding again.

I did learn a bit of interesting trivia while reading about nosebleeds online.  Did you know that Attila the Hun died from a nosebleed?  In 453 AD on the night of his wedding, he got a very heavy nosebleed and choked to death.  Nice huh?

Anyway, my point is that our school week hit a major speed bump this week because I felt so awful Thursday that we didn't accomplish much of anything.  We did however watch lots of streaming videos from Netflix about Egypt, and one about birds, both of which we're studying.  Maybe I should have looked for something on Attila the Hun?  We also did some independent reading while taking it easy in bed.  Who knew that a nosebleed could wipe a person out like that!  I guess bleeding for 5 hours will do that.  How's your week going?  Better than mine I hope!