Me: Why is your nose bleeding?
Him: I was helping Kid 1 to put cardboard into a dumpster in her apartment. We put too much cardboard in and the lid fell and scraped off a chunk of my skin.
Me: When was this?
Him: Wednesday.
Me: You got scraped by the lid of an apartment dumpster with about a trillion of contaminants on it. Did you sterilize the scrape?
Him: ::blank look::
Me: Really?
Him: Well, since it’s still bleeding, I suppose we could put some antibiotic gel on it. If we have some.
I can’t even.
Do. Not. Get me started.
So much this!
UGH. Testosterone poisoning is the worst.
The men in my family swear by toilet paper and electrical tape. Or if something needs to be dug out (like a splinter) he uses a nail clipper. 35 yrs together, I just gave up.
*communes in the zone of can’t even*
…only if we don’t have any paper towels and duct tape. And people wonder why small children instinctively run to their mothers when they get hurt *rolls eyes*.
Everybody knows you can’t use duct tape on cuts, that’s what superglue is for.
Oh, superglue is for split fingernails, preferably applied next to open, bleeding skin. “But they use surgical glue. What’s the difference?”
I chopped off the tip of my finger (1st time using Cook’s Illustrated “best serrated knife” no less) and the urgent care center used surgical glue, aka super glue, to stop the bleeding. It hurt like the devil but did the job. They were out of duct tape I guess 😉
There are two difference between superglue and surgical ‘super-glue’. 1) surgical glue is sterile and superglue isn’t and 2) cost 🙂
Use Vet bond, better than super glue! It’s almost the same thing as surgical glue except it’s tinted blue, dries clear though. Yes, It says use only on animals, but we are just big animals anyway. Always have I in your first aid kit?
What, no duck tape? Or paper towel?
That was my thought!
I’m laughing visualizing a wad of paper towel on the nose, with duct tape wrapped around the head. I guess he couldn’t make that work for him (didn’t have a supply in tan or brown?) so it was bleed. The wonder & mystery of men!
You can get duct tape with pictures of bandages on it…
Awesome.
Bleeding good – carries away contaminants.
That’s right up there with “just rub some dirt on it and walk it off”!
Hey now. No *men* use that. All males learn by the age of 11 that there’s tape and glue in dad’s shop.
Every time a friend posts about one of her sons doing something like this, she finishes with “Boys. I have boys.”
When my husband worked as an industrial electrican he constantly came home with his hands all cut up.( some deep cuts too not just scrapes) His solution- instead of just keeping some high performance bandaids or even regular bandaids and a roll of medical tape in his tool bag with a tube of antibacterial ointment for just such an occasion he just slapped on whatever color electrical tape he had on hand….. after years in the ‘I can’t even’ zone and making him kits to take that he didn’t use I gave up.
I’m convinced a certain percentage of his bloodstream is made up of gunky black adhesive….
????
Some years ago my cousin (an adult male who was an Air Force pilot…certain minimum standard of intelligence required you would think… cut his head open on a metal fitting on a garage door. My kids came running with a report of the incident and I went to render first aid (his wife being away from home). Deep cut, bleeding freely and needing stitches, at least three or four. No he says, I have a project to finish. Just tie the hair together to pull it closed and give me a paper towel to mop up the blood. Gaah. I told him his hair was too short to tie the strands together and did he want me to rat him out to the flight surgeon? He was mad at me for 2 weeks.
Anne in Virginia
My oldest nephew worked at an airport as a mechanic. He shaved his head during his first week. Reason, if he got a cut from banging his head, it was easier to find. I think he once mentioned superglue as part of the work first aid kit.
Okay, maybe I’m the outlier. I DO have a first aid kit with steri-strips, butterfly bandages, and that sort of stuff. My kids come to me first rather than Momma because she always told them to see me instead or called me while they bled. However, I do have to agree with the sentiment that men and tape and wounds seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly.
To add to the “don’t even…”category. I watched a line cook cut himself, and then try to seal the cut using a slice of onion. He actually believed it worked. he even tried to tape it in place. Pretty sure that’s dumber than rubbing dirt on it. BTW, you can buy superglue for cuts with germicide in it. Look for Liquid Skin. Great for minor wounds, hangnails gone wrong, papercuts, and getting steristrips to stick to a bloody wound site.
You are not the only outlier. My husband also tends to be the one render first aid. Mainly because he has had first aid training. In fact he is the one more likely to tell me I need to go to the doctor or a walk-in clinic. My mom was a nurse so I am used to dealing with minor things at home. Although I would not use any kind of tape but medical tape against the skin I have been known to use paper towel and packing tape!
Important safety note on Liquid Skin: when they say “minor wounds” and “small,” they mean it. My husband scraped most of the skin off of his upper shin sliding to home during a softball game. He didn’t want to use bandages, so he spent a good ten minutes painting the whole area with Liquid Skin. (Picture a small bottle with a tiny brush, like clear nail polish.) Used up half the bottle. Complained that it stung a bit, then kept on stinging. Over the next few days, it kept cracking open and oozing, so he kept painting on more.
It healed, eventually. He still has a giant scar. And the next softball season, first thing he did was slide to third… he just let it bleed out that time. I guess he learned?
Lol, sounds like my husband whose philosophy when it comes to cuts (and most other injuries) is “give it a few days…”
Insufferable creatures. Men and grandmother’s have this particular behavior in common. My grandmother, 86 and still acting like she just turned 60, got bit by a dog and basically hid it from everyone until we spotted it on accident. Naturally it was infected. It was like pulling teeth to get her to a doc and then she swore to the doc that her obviously infected wound was fine! Ugh.
Great gran, cut tip of finger off and wanted kerosene to stop bleeding….sigh….
Reminds me of a certain werewolf.
Reminds me of a certain telekinetic army vet.
Reminds me of something Curran would do with Kate looking on shaking her head. Yeah, I can see a certain telekinetic army vet doing this too.
Actually, it reminds me more of something Kate might do.
And I think Doolittle would agree.
*points and laughs*
Yeah, that.
All you can do is shake your head and laugh . . .
I had a 6 vessel bypass open heart surgery in April. Every incision was superglue, even the big one on my chest. I was peeling off superglue for weeks! But then the surgeons were all men!
Welcome back, blood and all!
My husband has the perfect solution, he faints at the sight of blood (and needles) so leaving someone else to care for him!
Not just cuts and bruises.
Hubby: hey hon want to hear something cool?
Me: ok.
Hubby: blows his nose and his ear makes a high pitched noise.
Me: that’s not supposed to do that. Does it hurt, you should have it checked out.
Hubby: nah its just some water from Jungle Warfare training…proceeds to entertain kids for the rest of the night with bubbly squeaky ear.
Two days later he has a fever, pain in the ear and a ruptured infected ear drum.
I had to go pick him up from work, because he was too sick to make it on his own. I told you so didn’t seem like it would help at the time.
This made me chuckle!! Though in my house, my dad is the first aider. Cause mum’s not good with blood. But if it’s dad needing first aid? Forget it.
I have to admit, I’m bad at cleaning up cuts. Unless I get them at work, from a cat (work in a veterinary hospital!). Then I put on all the disinfectants around. And if a certain vet is on duty and aware of whats happened, she treats it as well!! But unless I get an injury from a bite, I tend to shrug my shoulders and get on with it. Concussion and whiplash when falling from my horse? Get up and back on. Didn’t see anyone about it until almost 2 weeks later. Oops…
Ouch!
I’m pretty casual with most cuts and scrapes, unless they meet my internal standard for deep or likely to become infected. I stop bleeding fast, I heal fast, whatevs. (If I’m doing a lot of sparring, I do use die da jiu regularly, because bruises on top of bruises sucks hard. Stupid estrogen effect on bruising.) I am somewhat prone to minor auto-surgery, which I mostly blame on my research work, but might also have something to do with having been raised on stories of grandma sewing up grandpa on the kitchen table (because it wasn’t safe to take him to the hospital – he was a labor union organizer, back when that really shortened your life expectancy.) (Oh, and yeah, I’ve used a number of kinds of glue on various holes that oughtn’t to have been in my body – hey, I have access to some really awesome glues. Though gel superglue most commonly.)
But you mentioned that about the horse – not nearly as dramatic, but when I was about fourteen, I’d gone riding with my dad and younger sibs, and ended up on about the most boring horse in the entire world. And it was November, and I didn’t have gloves. So, I eventually spaced out, which was stupid, and… the horse saw something scary, which woke him up, and shied, and threw me, and I landed on a rock on my left wrist. (On a slightly muddy drippy rocky trail somewhere in the hills on western washington.) Well! Suddenly things were a lot more interesting, so I rolled back onto my feet, climbed onto the horse, and was a lot more cheerful for the rest of the ride.
…and eventually the ride finished, and the horses were taken care of, and we went inside and I sat in front of the fire. And as soon as my hands warmed up, my wrist swelled up to about three times its normal size. (It was sprained and cracked rather than actually broken. Though I was a damnfool about keeping the splint on when it was getting in my way. This is when I was still pretty serious about piano, so you’d really think I might have had more sense.)
My older brother had nose bleeds (some bad) when he was a teen. What did he do? Stuff toilet paper up his nose to stop the bleed. He would tell everyone he was fine while he would get rid of the used toilet paper and put more up his nose. He looked like he should have been in a Stephen King film.
I put aloe on my cuts. Nice anti-bacterial properties. No duct tape and paper towels unless the cut is really bad. No aloe? Use honey.
My husband still has nose bleeds and does the same.
Tell him real men use tampons for nosebleeds 🙂
Fun fact: honey was the original liquid bandage, used in Egypt during the time of King Tut.
At the martial arts school a guy I used to date attended (so I occasionally hung out their and sparred with folks, the way you do) when people get bloody noses during matches, they put small half tampons up their noses, and then just keep on fighting. It’s hilarious, but effective.
I’ve heard that. My eyebrows went up to my hairline. I agree it’s very hilarious.
Tampons apparently have been used by American soldiers (and presumably other nations as well) for plugging, and stanching the bleeding of, bullet wounds in addition to bloodied martial arts noses while sparring, according to Snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/military/tampon.asp
I think it’s hilarious, also; so I read your comment to my husband, who started studying Okinawin GoJu in the ’60s. His response: Wimps! Apparently they used to just bleed & hope the other guy slipped in it. I have the feeling that I might have enjoyed watching but wouldn’t want to participate.
Well antibiotic gel is better then duct tape 😉
My brother, then aged 15 went to a boy scout camp out for 3 days. When he returned he had a visible bruise on the side of his face and a healing gash about 3 inches long on the top of his head. He also had blisters on his hands and one forearm. me “What happened?” Him-“Nothing.” His buddies ratted him out. There had been a windstorm and he got whacked by a falling tree branch that crushed the lean to he was in. There was a sizeable fire in the woods nearby and the boy scouts helped fight it. Me: What did you put on the injuries?” Him-“What injuries?” Me-“WHAT DID YOU PUT ON THEM?” Him- Oh for-ginger ale.” Me “???” Him, shrugging-“It’s what I had. It’s not as if anything bad happened.”
Thank you, Ilona Andrews for being alive. I was becoming concerned.
For the majority of my growing up years my Dad was primary care provider. He did not deal with tears but as a mechanical engineer by training and habit if injury involved breakage he wanted to know how we planned to prevent in future. he did not care if we got injury when got dumped off back of bull calf we were riding or jumping off top of chicken house using Mother’s good company sheets as parachutes or fell out of 100 year old oak tree. All of these activities had been forbidden under our Mother’s rule. Blood he cleaned with peroxide–which burns– and bandaged with medical gauze and duct tape. Simple cuts he super glued [after cleaning] which burned like the dickens and then bandaged with medical gauze and duct tape. if he determined sutures were needed then he applied a compression bandage and off to town 30 plus minutes away we all went to emergency room [such as when one of my sibs chopped another sib in head with hatchet]. head wounds bleed more profusely compared to other wounds. Snake bites got the proper army prescribed treatment and then off to town we all went to emergency room for anti venom. [He believed we were all responsible for whatever we were doing when injury occurred so we all stood witness at hospital. Besides male stay at home dad’s were rare then.]
In regards to the nose injury– there is a reason for all the doc in boxes aka urgent care. given all the damage from Hurricane Harvey, if nose cut is still bleeding 3 days later then he needs to go to urgent care for medical care. Yes, hurricanes are a lot of wind and rain but also a lot of not so good stuff blowing around and contaminating normal, regular environment. yes we had to drag Dad to doctor for his annual physicals and his chemotherapy treatments were like pulling healthy elephant teeth but he went because we told him if he was us this was what he would make us do. Since he knew that was true he soldiered on.
For a minute there I thought this was a snippit from, “The Innkeeper.” 🙂
The nurse in me is like ???
Just rub a little dirt on it and walk it off.
So glad to hear from you again. I have been concerned. Between Harvey and house hunting you must have been really busy.
Two couples in our family have sold their houses and bought new houses and are now preparing to move in the last month. It can be all consuming
It wasn’t even a gash. Just a cut. Please, people.
LMAO!!!
A co-worker and I were conversing last week about cuts and bruises we both received during hurricane preparation and then hurricane clean-up afterwards. We both could not remember when exactly we these happened or that they were quickly put out of mind due to the tasks we needed to preform.
All I could say was, “… we must have been amped up (on adrenaline) for days”. Very scary when I looked at a couple cuts and horrendous bruises.
I am happy to see that the author’s vocabulary has expanded past one word. Congratulations on the house!
At least he didn’t use duct tape and a paper towel…
Maybe he’s hoping it will fall off so he can get a gold replacement nose and rock the Tyco Brave look. According to Ascanio chicks dig guys with a gold nose. 🙂
Sorry should be Tyco Brahe look. Stupid auto correct. Sighs
It’s the Y chromosome. Gotta be.
My Dad was a doctor. He believed in the rule that you don’t bother the ER staff unless there was excessive bleeding, a large bone was broken and/or part protruding from the skin or you had a serious illness. Broken or dislocated fingers we learned how to set ourselves. Needless to say you build up a form of stoicism after that. I badly cut my foot on a piece of glass and called to my wife to come get me a butterfly bandage before I passed out from the shock. She thought I was joking until I collapsed on our kitchen floor. She went quite pale and said, “I didn’t think it was going to be that bad.” when she saw it. She wanted me to go to hospital. Me, I cleaned it up, slapped a butterfly bandage on it and spent the rest of the day on the couch with my foot up. 🙂
Oh, start me up.
Me ex is a wildlife biologist. His specialty is Mississippi Sandhill Cranes, who use their very long beaks to probe in bayous and dirt for tubers. Bayous. And dirt, which contain arsenic and fish TB (you don’t want to know) and tetanus.
So he comes over to fix something with an eye swollen shut. Turns out when he captured a crane (the other day), he didn’t wear safety glasses and she nailed him by sliding her beak between his lid and his eyeball. While he celebrated the fact that he didn’t lose an eye (since whenever it happened), he somehow missed the larger point that their beaks are loaded with bacteria and poisons. I threatened to drag him by his ear to the ER.
Exhausting, men.
All I can do is pass the polysporin and a glass of wine.
When TD broke his arm I couldn’t convince him to go to the hospital. He told me he was fine, (he’d been chainsawing a tree I had plans for a friend to take down). He had an obvious swan break. I grabbed him by the arm and amazingly he went with me.
He only needed 9 screws to be put back together again.
Men.
So he’s now a member of the “weird out the TSA agents at the airport” club. Next time I have to go through airport security, I plan to were shorts and a tank top under my clothes so I can send my pants and shirt through the detector and so they can see that the weird metal reading is under my skin and not me trying to smuggle a weapon.
Metal in my left knee and in my right elbow.
Ferrous metal? (I have a titanium plate, but, that’s bog standard, really.)
Non ferrous. I know this because I have had MRIs since the surgeries. I believe that doctors make sure that non-magnetic metals get used in various implants so people can get the scans they need.
The TSA folks haven’t given me trouble about titanium plate. I’ve had more trouble about my tea canisters. (It’s matcha, so I guess it is a meta canister filled with powder – I travel with the envelopes these days.*) One of the papers in the to-be-written pile is going to include a note that one of the benefits of my marine environment protocols is reducing environmental nitrates not only is much healthier for the animals and better for you experimental data… but if means you’re much less likely to test positive for nitrates when flying (which used to be sadly common for members of my lab.)
* Oh, and in the list of things I learned. If you are flying, and you’re taking some of your sourdough culture to your friend so you can bake together? Do not put some in a centrifuge tube, thinking that it’s sturdy and will cope well with pressure changes. (I was working in a genetics lab at the time – and not flying much – it seemed like a natural!) Now if I’ve traveling with sourdough I put it the the cutest jar I can find, I label it “Sourdough – For Bread” put a piece of gingham over the top and tie it with a ribbon. Of stupid TSA moves, this one is only exceeded by the telescoping sword. Well, okay, showing them how the telescoping sword worked. I was being helpful.
I was basing this on the experience of my globetrotting cousin. Of course her plate and screws are thirtyish years older than mine.
For interesting things that show up on X-rays, get a letter from your doctor on official stationery explaining what was done. If the TSA people have questions they can call the doctor, but official stationery generally calms concerned inquisitors. This also works for interesting prescriptions.
Iodine & Steri strips, then Anti-biotic cream.
Just tell him its red dirt (or mud) , white duct tape and bacon grease.
No one with an untreated- dumpster-nose-cut gets to
argue with an imaginative description of first aid materials. Arnica Montana will help with any swelling *and John Wayne used it in one of his movies for gun shot wounds so its a “manly-man” fix. He can cuss all he wants, but he only gets a sticker if he holds still for treatment. ? Those are the rules.
BTW: Congratulations to all of you on your new dwellings.
HAHAHAHA so that’s where Rogan got his paper towels and duct tape idea!
If the wound is a few days old with no signs of infection and the person has showered or his washed face since then, what is the point of massive disinfection at this point? It is a little worrisome that it’s still bleeding though, because blood is hard to get out of shirts.
My husband hurt his right wrist in a fall & refused to go to the ER. It took several days for the VA clinic to see him & the VA doc refused to order x-rays. My husband refused to pursue further treatment.
A few days later, he had a very bad nightmare & landed on the floor, damaging his left wrist. I had to threaten to knock him out & call the ambulance before he’d go to the ER. X-rays didn’t show anything but the doc was concerned enough to provide a hard brace. My husband didn’t follow up for further treatment on that injury, either.
He still has trouble using his left hand & has a lot of pain in both wrists. It’s hard for me to be sympathetic.
“It’s just a flesh wound!”
*headdesk*
My father is the same way. I swear it’s a Y chromosome thing.
I realize that this may have been covered elsewh were in the blog, but I am wondering what motivated Ilona and Gordon to move from their current h
ome?
I think it was the prospect of becoming empty nesters.
…I…wow. I’m just sitting here laughing and shaking my head. My eyebrows may never descend to their original position.
My brother’s the cautious type, but my father…my father is the “gets sick -> gets sicker -> bronchitis – > pneumonia all while saying I’M FINE” sort. None of the men in my family go in for stuff that would require superglue, which I’m starting to think is a good thing.
I love it! ???
elections in germany – snippet anyone??
I’ve known more than a few folks like that, mostly male, but a few female too.
I’m not QUITE that bad. I usually go and wash it, and put antibiotic and a bandaid on it, before deciding I don’t need stitches and go back to what I was doing. And I have to say that when I broke my arm I was headed for urgent care less than an hour later (it wasn’t an obvious break, but it was obvious pretty quick that it wasn’t just a sprain either). On the other hand I did get back on the horse (literally) after falling off and getting stepped on, it was just a bruise!
During my childhood, my mother would drag me to the doctor if I so much as sniffled. She’s a super-hypochondriac herself, and wanted to be sure we weren’t dying of the plague. On the occasions when I did stay home with a cold, just wanting to sleep and be left alone, she would constantly lay her cold-clammy-hands of death on my face (checking for a fever and scaring me awake) or put her hand in front of my nose to make sure I was breathing. As a consequence, I have to REALLY be sick or very injured before I go to the doctor. And my kids weren’t allowed to stay home from school unless they were bleeding or actively throwing up. My husband is worse than I am about seeing the doctor, so I can’t say much. I know for me it was my upbringing. On him, I blame testosterone.
My dad broke his hip and bought a pair of crutches to hobble around on for three days until my mom forced him to go to the dr.