There Will Be Blood** UPDATED

We've been having some evening drama around the HomeFront Corp these days. For the past few days, Fiver has been getting bloody noses.

Sounds like no big deal, right?

Usually, I would agree with you, but these aren't your garden variety bloody noses. This kid has had six bloody noses in three days, always from the same nostril, and it takes an average of thirty minutes to get it to stop. Sometimes longer.

Rob, who has been in Kansas for the past few days, got to experience his first Fiver Bleed-a-Thon last night. Good thing he's a doctor because it wasn't for the faint of heart.

When we came home from the airport (after he finally got in at 10 pm, even though he was supposed to be home before dinner, thanks very much to the insane passenger who crammed miniature bottles of alcohol down the plane's toilet and flushed thereby causing a tremendous clog that had the plane sitting on the tarmac for hours. Two thumbs up! You're awesome, dude!), we saw our bedroom light was shining.

Uh-oh, not a good sign. Fiver had been sleeping in our bed, so if the light was on that meant bad mojo. We came upstairs to find my sister with Fiver on her lap, both of them looking like they had been hit with arterial spray. There was a big bloody towel up to his face. Crap.

There was blood all over the bathroom, all over our bed, all over everyone's clothes, on Fiver's legs and arms, in his ears, and well, I'm sure you get the picture. If it wasn't from my own child, I might have run out of the house with a major case of the Heebie-Jeebies.

We did everything you can do for a bloody nose, which, by the way, is not very darn much. You can tilt the head slightly forward, pinch the nose right under where the bony part of the nose stops, and you can apply ice. And you can wait for it to stop, that's pretty much it. Party on.

The problem is that he did not stop bleeding. We were going through absorbent bathroom hand towels like they were tissues. He was bleeding so much that blood started coming out of his mouth. Plus, he was freaking out with a capital FREAK.

This cycle repeated itself all night. We let him sleep in a little pillow nest on our floor, and every hour or two he would pop up crying and he would be bleeding again. We would get the bleeding to stop, he would fall asleep, and then he'd start all over. He finally managed to fall asleep for good in the wee small hours, and so far this morning he's been blood-free.

Fiver has an appointment with the pediatric ENT doctor later this month (his hearing deficit is back, maybe more tubes. Happy day.), but Rob is trying to see if he can fit him in in the next day or two because of The Bleeding. If it's just a dry nose due to allergies or something like that, well that's a pain, but we can deal. But with everything else that goes on with this child's head, we'd just like to be safe.

Have any of your kids ever had marathon bloody noses like this, my friends? Share with me, because I'm a little freaked out and a little weary of the long nights around here.

Updated to Add: We managed to squeeze in with the PA in the ENT's office this afternoon after therapy. She took a look in his nose and said that he basically has what amounts to a big scab sitting on a big vessel in his nose. When his nose gets irritated or dried out, the scab comes loose and The Bleeding begins. We need to keep his nose moist and she said that we need to swab the inside of his nose with triple antibiotic ointment and shoot him up with some saline spray. If we keep him moist enough, the scab with go away and he should have no more problems. If he does continue to bleed, then they will need to cauterize the inside of his nose, possibly at the same time as they do his new set of tubes should he need them. We are talking big fun, my friends.