Ha ha, I had a "Rhinoplasty" in December 1995, after the specialist discovered that my nose had been broken at least 3 times. (I didn't know that I'd ever broken it, but I did get in a lot of fights when I was a youngster..........)
After the op, the doc told me that while he was up my nose he found some polyps in my sinuses, so he chopped them out while he was at it, but told me not to do any heavy lifting or other strenuous activity for 2 weeks, lest I burst an artery in my schnoz.
The morning of the 14th day, I woke up with a blood nose. I couldn't make it stop, so I went to the hospital, and after a couple of hours, they were able to stop it. That afternoon I went around to buy some aluminum, and bumped into a friend who'd just bought a really nice CNC mill. He invited me over to take a look.
While i was there he showed me the rotary table he'd bought, and he said, "I bet you can't pick it up". Without thinking, I did just that, and placed it on the bed of the mill. Suddenly blood started to spray out of my nose, at high pressure, so I pinched my nose, but the blood then poured out of my mouth. Great.
My mate's wife is a nurse, so she took me inside and put a "Tupperware" bowl under me while she tried pinching and icing, but to no avail. I half filled the bowl in a very short time. She called my doctor who ordered an ambulance, which took me to the nearest hospital. On the trip they gave me a 2 litre milkshake container which was about 3/4 full by the time I reached the hospital.
On arrival, the only doctor on duty (Christmas season) was an intern just out of medical school, who was extremely nervous. I told him to ring the specialist who'd done the op, but he was too frightened, it seemed. Eventually when nothing else worked and there wasn't all that much blood left in me, he rang the specialist who told him to insert a saline filled catheter up my nose and into the sinus, then fill it with saline, to block the tear in the artery.
He stuck it up too far, and it hit my gag reflex and I started to choke, so I pulled it back out, and we started to wrestle with each other. All of a sudden, the bleeding stopped, and we looked at each other in surprise, where I'd pulled it as he was inflating it, was where the artery had burst. Woohoo!
I laid on the gurney in the hallway of the hospital all night and didn't get any pain meds or food, or even a blanket, all night. Next morning I was transferred by ambulance to the Cabrini Private Hospital in Prahran. This is a Catholic hospital, and is so swanky there's a wine list with the meal menu! God loves his little Catholics, so I would have been well catered for, if I could eat with this thing up my nose, which of course, I couldn't. I averaged one meal per day for the eight days that I was there, but I was on morphine for most of my stay, so I was happy.
In the last couple of days before they released me, (on Christmas Eve) they'd cut me back to Panadeine Forte. I don't remember if I had a crap while I was at the hospital, but I remember waking up on Christmas morning thinking that a big ol' crap would be the order of the day.
I sat on the can, and started squeezing one out. I'll never forget that pain, it was like giving birth to house brick constructed from rusty razor blades! OMFG! I Had to shove the toilet roll in my mouth so the wife and kids wouldn't hear my pitiful screams, it was like being raped by an elephant who was thoughtful enough to use a barbed wire condom! I was told later that it was the Panadeine, so I avoid it nowadays at all costs. Giving birth to a spiked watermelon on Christmas Day really pisses me off!
