Blood

For some episodes of my life, I have been very prone to nosebleeds. Some of these bleeds have been associated with stress, some with the simple physical causes of colds or thumps on my nose. The strangest set were when I was first at University, hundreds of miles away from my girlfriend, with whom I was very much in love.

We were young and stupid, so we didn't use contraception. She had irregular periods, which tended to be of around four weeks when we hadn't had sex; but six or more weeks if we had. Consequently we lived in a state of semi-permanent anxiety, which I am sure was bad for us both. But strangely, if I had a nosebleed in those days, I would be told immediately afterwards that my girlfriend's period had arrived, and that we were saved from an unwanted pregnancy. This happened several times, until we parted.

Consequently, I impute meaning to unexplained bleeds, such as the one which I suffered this morning, just typing away at my computer. I'm not under stress, I don't have a cold, and there was no obvious reason for it to happen. It's just that suddenly my left nostril started streaming blood, dripping rapidly down upon the desk in front of my keyboard.

So why?

:-]