My Nose is a Magnet

There's no other explanation than the fact that my nose is a magnet.
It attracts things like frisbees, roads, toddlers' knees and toy cabinet lids.
This morning, I opened the lid of a wooden chest filled with games. I was looking for a die, you know, one of a pair of dice. I needed it for a lesson I am teaching this afternoon.
I could have held the lid up with one hand and pulled games out with the other, but the thing on top was a heavy wooden box with a checkerboard on top. I knew the wooden box would hold chess and checkers pieces, but I couldn't lift it up with one hand.
I tested the lid of the chest. It seemed like it would stay open, like those chests with the safety latches.
So I let go of the lid and grabbed the chess box with both hands.
You can guess what happened.
But instead of hitting me on the head, for some reason (my nose is a magnet) it hit a glancing blow to my nose, leaving a cut that oozed blood and the beginning of a bump.
I went for the freezer immediately to ice the bump.
Thirty years ago or so, I had a bump on my nose. It was a family thing, the Kincer bump.
But that first incident with the Frisbee and two nose surgeries later removed the Kincer bump.

Since then, I've had an aquiline nose, in spite of a knee to the nose by Tucker when he was a toddler. My fault for blowing a raspberry on his belly.
In spite of a fall while running, where my nose met the asphalt. Stitches to my knee and another surgery to straighten out my nose.

The doctor carefully reconnected the bones and no harm done. I was still wearing the bandage when the first copies of my book arrived.
Just a month ago I taught my first VIPkid class and I got a bloody nose throughout.
Perhaps my nose is in mutiny, planning to take over or make a break from my body. Perhaps it has had enough.
I don't think it's broken this time. Hopefully, just a bump that will heal and disappear, but, as the doctors have pointed out, only time will tell.

Saturday Snapshot -- Old Breaks

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
This week, I fell while I was running and broke my nose. I know, people don't usually land on their noses.
I got to thinking about the time before when I broke my nose, 24 years ago. Earl and I were dating on and off. I was standing on his front porch talking to someone when Dave called my name. I turned toward Dave and a frisbee cracked me in the middle of the nose. And that broke my nose. No blood. Just snap.
This photo from that first broken nose is very different from this week's break. Earl keeps this picture in a frame. Maybe that's when he fell in love with me.

I did end up having to have surgery to straighten my nose after that. And I was a single woman, driving myself to the doctor, asking friends to pick me up and take me home after procedures and surgery. Dave, the guy who broke my nose, lay on the bed reading a book aloud to me when my eyes watered too much to open them.

When I broke my nose this week, it was very bloody and it helped rule out a medical career for my 16-year-old who came to pick me up and hasn't been able to look at me all week because of the wounds.

I won't run the bloody photo again, but if you want all the details, I blogged about it here.

I think I've done pretty well this week. I went to work that same night after I broke my nose and I've worked the past four days. One more day to teach -- at 9 this morning -- and I'll get a day off tomorrow in return for my fortitude.

Hope everyone else had a calmer week than me.

Running Fail

I was making fairly good time during my run this morning. It wasn't 6 a.m. yet and I had finished half of my five mile run. I turned onto a dark side street and wondered whether the headlamp I was wearing over my hat really helped me see the road better.
But I didn't have time to ponder it for long because my foot landed in a pothole, my ankle turned and the momentum propelled my body forward to a landing with a crunch, on my nose.
I heard the bones crack.
My nose? Who lands on their nose?
I didn't stay on the ground for a second because I could feel the blood gushing. My nose grew thick with blood and mucous, and I coughed to catch a breath. I picked up the fallen hat and headlamp, but stayed bent over at the waist so the blood would not pour down my front. I let the thick, red drops pool on the asphalt as I reached for my phone.
I carry my phone with me on runs because it has my music and it keeps track of my miles. Today, it offered me rescue.
About two miles from home and bleeding profusely, I dialed someone who I knew would have his phone close by no matter the time -- my 16-year-old Tucker.
"Hello?" his sleepy voice went up on the end in a question.
"I think I broke my nose. Can you come get me?" I said, my voice clogged as I tried to breath and talk at the same time.
"You broke your arm?" he asked.
"No, my nose."
I told him my general location then said I would go back to the closest main street so he could find me. I stood on the corner, still bent over dripping blood.
An early morning walker passed by.
"Did you lose something?" she asked in the darkness. I must have looked like a basketball player searching for a lost contact lens on the court.
I told her an abbreviated version of my accident and she handed me a tissue to wipe up some of the blood. That little tissue didn't stand a chance.
Then the woman walked on.
I kept glancing down at my hand, my knuckles. They felt sore, but I didn't see any blood where I had scraped them.
Within minutes, the knuckles had swollen to a walnut-sized bump.
"Oh..." was all I could say. I felt miserable but refused to give in to moaning in pain.
The bleeding subsided enough to allow me to sit down on the curb without coating my shirt in red.
I saw a car a block away slow at the intersection then creep forward. I swung the headlamp I held in my hand as a kind of signal light. My phone rang, and I told Tucker to turn toward the light, but not in a death and dying kind of way.
The car raced down the block then and I limped into it. My knee was skinned and bleeding too.
I climbed in the car and Tucker recoiled in shock.
He handed me towels. "Can you wipe that off?" he asked. I'm sure he meant to be concerned rather than disgusted.
I didn't realize at the time that I had scraped the skin off my nose, so bleeding from the outside and inside.
"I think I might have broken my hand too," I said motioning toward the swollen knuckles.
"Oh, God," he said. Right then, I ruled out any sort of medical career for him. He drove home like I was in labor and might give birth in the car.
My poor husband had just pulled the car in the garage 4 hours before, having driven home from New York. Still he pulled on clothes and accompanied me to the Ohio State emergency room, all the while predicting he would be accused of spousal abuse.
About a dozen xrays and five hours later, the doctor sent me home with some pain killers, antibiotics, a wrapped hand (just bruised not broken), and a referral to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor for follow up on my broken nose.
 So I'm here at home now, with a black scrape of asphalt on my thumb reminding me of the tumble I took this morning and a pounding headache
What have I learned from this experience? Maybe not as much as I should have. I asked the doctor before we left, "So, I don't usually fall on my nose. How long until I can run again?"
"Give it at least today," he said with a pat on my arm. "Truthfully, it's all going to depend on when you can breath well enough to run again."