A Sports Injury, A Kids Book, and A Really Bad Idea
Ever done something mindnumbingly stupid that somehow worked out for the best? [Adventure]
TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS STORY:
There is blood. Not in pictures, but in discussion. There is extensive discussion of blood, a sports injury, and the treatments for it (one of which was dangerously DIY).
Proceed with caution.
So, little bit about me for those who know me now.
If you know ”Shanie” now, and have seen recent pictures of me, you would know that I am a WOUS. No, not a wuss, although I might be a little these days, I’m talking about a Woman Of Unusual Size.
(We do exist)
Also, you might know about how I am currently… less than mobile.
As in, when I met AEW wrestler John Moxley at a convention a couple years ago, I was in a wheelchair.
Anyway, taking all this into account, you would assume that I have never been the athletic sort.
You would assume wrong.
Once upon a time, yours truly was extremely athletic. But, it was the type of try-hard athletic that never got me on any sports teams in school but did award me the senior year yearbook title of “Gym Class Hero”.
But this story isn’t about my adventures in gym class. Those stories will come later.
This is a story of YMCA Girls Slow-Pitch Softball.
Slow-pitch softball is a game for kids. Or, at least, the YMCA decided it was. It was less intensive than fast-pitch and could be played by younger kids. When I first joined the league, I was somewhere around 11 years old. And I wasn’t very good. When I did the tryouts/scouting sessions, I was rated as a “1”, meaning one of the least skilled players.
I would later find myself as one of the few 5’s in the entire league, but that too is another story.
As a 1, I would find myself put into positions that ‘carried little weight’. Everyone on the team had to be given a chance to play each game, so I did have a chance to play. And where I started, was catcher.
Except, as catcher, they discovered something quickly:
I had a hell of a throwing arm.
I could easily whip the ball past the pitcher to 2nd base to throw someone out.
The response of the coach?
Put me in left field.
So, by my second year, I was stationed in left field.
It was on an ordinary summer day, in just an ordinary game, when disaster struck.
In our slow-pitch league, there were no shortstops. It wasn’t a position allowed by the league. So that meant left fielders had to man line drives to left field. And it was on one of these line drives, that was zooming along the dirt of the infield, that I rushed to cut it off so I could make the throw for the out.
Except.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As I bent over with my glove outstretched to nab the ball, it hit the edge of the grass and kicked upwards…
Directly into my face.
My nose was wrecked instantly.
Bleeding like crazy I tried to pick up the ball, but I was stunned. The third baseman rushed to make the play, but the game was stopped as I was hurried off the field to the first aid station.
That was the end of my playtime for that game.
But it was not the end of the story for my nose.
Because little did any of us know, that shot-to-the-face had deviated my septum in a way that left me with a permanent injury… and chronic nose bleeds.
We figured it out quickly as, over the course of the summer, I would continue to get nosebleed after nosebleed. It didn’t take much. A day a little too dry, a blow a little too hard, even sneezing could cause my nose to bleed. Horrible, gushing nosebleeds that the nurse at school ended up setting up a chair in the one hallway of her office just for me to sit in while I tended to what was usually the second or third one that week.
Sometimes, they didn’t want to stop.
One night, when I was 16, I got one after that night’s episode of Monday Night Raw. I was in the basement of the house while my parents were upstairs in bed. The blood wouldn’t stop and by the time I realized I needed help, I was covered in bloodstains all over my hands and torso.
That night, I had one of the smartest ideas of my life.
See, the smoke detectors in our house were hardwired and interconnected.
And the smoke detector in the basement could be reached from the floor.
So, with one hand still trying to hold my nose, I reached up and held down the button for the smoke detector… which sounded the one two floors above me directly outside my parents’ bedroom.
They came rushing downstairs to find the fire and I can only imagine what they thought as they saw their only daughter standing in the basement family room, wearing only a now red-and-white sports bra and sweatpants, swatched and smeared with blood.
Thankfully they recovered quickly and the bloody nose was stopped before I needed to go to the hospital.
But, that night, our minds were made up.
SOMETHING had to be done.
I had an appointment made with an ear-nose-throat doctor to see about how to fix it. And his response was chemical cauterization.
I remember the pain of the chemicals causing me to start sobbing immediately, but it wasn’t choking, hiccupping sobs. My eyes just started draining like a damn had burst.
But it was over quickly and I went on my way.
For about 5 days.
On the sixth day, I was in math class when the scab came loose and, yep, another bloody nose.
When I got home, my mom was mad.
And back to the doctor we went.
He tried again.
I got to a week that time.
My mom was even madder and said that we might have to look into surgery.
Now, I’m sixteen. I don’t WANT facial surgery at SIXTEEN.
But…
How do I put this?
I was a reader when I was a kid.
And one of the books I read, I can’t remember the name of it, but it was about a young man trapped on an island. And one day, he suffers a wound, which he cauterizes with citrus juice.
Cue me having an IDEA!
My parents, in their fridge, had this sort of concentrated lemon juice stuff. It was lemon juice but not real. I don’t think. I remember it was WAY more potent than regular lemon juice.
And I had access to Q-Tips.
So, on another Monday night, after Raw when my parents were asleep, I plucked a Q-tip from the hiding spot I stashed it in and went to the fridge.
And then, I soaked the Q-tip in the lemon concentrate and shoved it directly up my nose.
The pain was searing and intense. But I didn’t scream. Didn’t scream, didn’t thrash, didn’t jerk. I stayed still and held that Q-Tip in place until the pain STOPPED.
And then, carefully removed it and threw it away.
It was about two weeks later when it occurred to my mom that I had stopped having nosebleeds.
She asked about it, and all I would say was “I fixed the problem”.
Because I did. I fixed the problem and I never had nosebleeds again.
To this day, the DIY cauterization has stuck, and when I have ear-nose-throat appointments, all he sees is the still-deviated septum. But there is no sign of how I once had an injury to that nose that caused multiple nosebleeds a week.
I fixed the problem.
With a Q-tip and lemon juice.
NOW, IMPORTANT NOTE!!!!
Would I recommend anyone do this? EVER?
NO!
I was a stupid kid doing stupid kid stuff that I just got lucky with.
Never DIY a nasal cauterization guys, seriously. DON’T DO IT.
But, I just wanted to share the story of the time I did and somehow got lucky enough to, yeah.
Fix the problem.