Crime Scene

A small history on Jared before I procede with the rest of the story: When he was barely two years old, in the middle of the night one night, he got the first of what would turn out to be probably at least 150-200 nose bleeds to date (I'm erring on the side of low; I'm sure he's had more). That night, he woke up screaming, I ran in, found him covered in blood, thought he'd been attacked...blah blah blah...turns out he was fine. He now sleeps with a box of tissues in bed with him because most of his nose bleeds occur at night. He's a pro at dealing with them on his own, and they rarely phase him.

As part of the whole frequent nose-bleed thing, he's also pretty much guaranteed to get a bloody nose if he gets bonked, bumped, punched, smacked, etc in the nose.

Over the summer, the boys were arguing over a toy. Connor was trying to get it (it was Jared's); Jared was trying to keep Connor from it; after Jared pulled Connor backwards by his hooded sweatshirt ("and tried to choke me to death!" as Connor tells it), Connor turned around and punched Jared in the face. Next thing I knew, Connor ran back to me at the other end of the house, SCREAMING that Jared was bleeding to death. I rushed out and saw blood POURING from both nostrils (wasn't even dripping, it was solidly running down in "rivers". The drips you see in the picture below are where he was moving around trying to keep the blood from landing on his feet, so the streams were splattering randomly). I grabbed a handfull of tissues on my way over to him and after about 15 minutes, got the bleeding under control.



I wish I'd thought to hold my hand out for size comparison or something because this picture really does not do justice to the reality! That puddle was a good 5-6 inches wide, and all the little splatters spread out more like 4-5 FEET wide. That's how forcfully the blood was pouring out of his nose! (The huge pile of blood soaked tissues in the trash can were very disturbing looking as well, but don't worry, I didn't take pictures of THAT!)

My family room looked like some sort of crime scene.

And in case you're interested, in the last 7 days, Jared has had 9 nose bleeds. I feel so bad for him!