Dehydrification

I have not seen any of the "Twilight" movies or TV shows...nor have I read the books. But I gather they portray vampires as sympathetic and aesthetically appealing characters.

Ick.

Personally, I have never been fond of the taste of blood, nor have I been particularly drawn to the genre of the Nosferatu. I did become temporarily excited when I learned there was a movie called "Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter," thinking that it couldn't miss with a title like that. Unfortunately, it was a terrible movie, and a disgrace to both the religious genre and to horror films.

Still, if I win the Lottery, I might try to buy the rights to remake it. I'm sure I could get Chuck Norris and Wesley Snipes to sign on.

Anyway, the point is that if there were any undead bloodsucking fiends in my condo complex, they'd have been compelled to visit me last night. Thanks to a rather exuberant nosebleed I was not expecting, the aroma of corpuscular discharge was probably overpowering. But no vampires appeared.

Some background: As a youth, I suffered nosebleeds aplenty. Paper thin nasal membranes gave way at the slightest impact. Sometimes, sneezing would set one off, sometimes it was merely a good blow into a hankie. Occasionally, blood would flow for no reason whatsoever.

OK, another side trip: When I wrote "blow into a hankie," it made me think of this:



In the 1960s, Kleenex ran TV ads to demonstrate the strength of their tissues. They covered a trumpet bell with a Kleenex, sprayed it with water, and then told Harry James to cut loose with all the lungpower he had. The tissue didn't break.

The ads made an impact on me for multiple reasons. For one thing, I had never heard of Harry James before. As a trumpet player myself, I was surprised by this. I had thought that Herb Alpert represented the pinnacle of the art form...yet here was a really old guy who had some serious chops. Perhaps there had been music worth listening to in the days before I was born. This opened up a wonderful and exciting time in my musical edification. Later on, I discovered Maynard Ferguson, Doc Severinsen, and Bill Chase, but never lost my admiration for the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and his big band brethren.

The other impact of that commercial was that it sparked my sense of skepticism, and reinforced my admiration for the benefits of science. Rather than making me think that Kleenex was really strong, it made me think about how the advertisers had used the principles of physics to essentially lie about their product.

Oh, there was nothing fake about their commercial. James really blew into a wet Kleenex. But it was an easy demonstration to replicate, so I got a rubber band and a spray bottle and tried it with my own trumpet.

It was immediately obvious that the force of the trumpeter's breath had a negligible impact on the tissue. While I'm sure that Harry James generated more air pressure than I did, I was equally sure that even Franco Columbu wouldn't have enough lungpower to rip the Kleenex. For one thing, the trumpet's bell has orders of magnitude larger area than the mouthpiece, which means that the force that went in would be spread over hundreds of times greater space by the time it reached the Kleenex. And that air is moving through several feet of tubing, introducing plenty of friction to attenuate the flow. Plus, much of the air's kinetic energy is converted to vibrational energy as it resonates within the instrument to produce the sounds. These factors alone would render Harry's breath harmless to the wet paper.

But the bigger factor is this: Kleenex tissues are fairly porous. What little air energy is left at the bell mostly passes through the tissue without harming it. In fact, when I tried to burst the Kleenex using only the trumpet's mouthpiece, it still wasn't easy. Oh sure, you could poke a finger right through it without even noticing the resistance, but air wasn't going to harm it no matter which musician's lungs were brought to bear.

Sorry for the length of that explanation. I'm sure all of that was obvious to adult readers. But when I was a kid, it took an experiment to help me understand. For some reason, though, I did not apply the scientific method to dealing with my nosebleeds. Probably because there were adults to tell me what to do. I had no reason to think they were wrong.

Well, OK, maybe I should have questioned authority. After all, these were the same people who told me to wait an hour after eating before I got in the swimming pool, which I knew was completely retarded. But I treated the bleeding as I was told to: tilt your head back, and put a cold wet washcloth on your forehead and the back of your neck.

Tilting your head back during a nosebleed tsunami only guarantees that you'll swallow a lot of blood. While swallowing your own blood isn't particularly harmful, it is certainly not pleasant, and will ruin your appetite far more effectively than a mid-afternoon Oreo. But this is the treatment that was applied for much of my youth.

At some point, though, medical technology did advance. The replacement treatment involved a simple pinching of the nose (no washcloths needed...unless there were drops to clean up), and that usually stopped the bleeding in less than a minute. I didn't even have to stop what I was doing, as long as I had one hand free to do the pinching. No more auto-vampirism required.

The other great advance was the hint to keep the inner nasal membranes from cracking by moistening them with Vaseline. Now, in addition to my swimming-driven addiction to Chapstick, I also made sure that petroleum jelly was kept around the house. Nosebleed problems became a rarity.

But last night as bedtime approached, all I could think about was the sweet appeal of dreamland. I hadn't been paying attention to relative humidity levels, and did not realize that my sinuses had dried out. I went to sleep oblivious of the impending hemorrhage.

In the middle of the night, I got up and ambled into the bathroom, where I decided to blow my nose. I didn't turn on the light, so I didn't see how red the tissue was. But a moment later, I felt the telltale drip.

It's probably more interesting to leave what followed to your imagination. But I will say that cleaning blood off the bathroom rug in the dark is not all that easy to do with an injured shoulder and one hand pinching a sopping red Kleenex to your nose. I'm certain that a competent CSI team would find all sorts of spatter evidence that I missed in my rush to get back into bed so I could feel refreshed for today's hill-climb run workout. Oh well. The good news is that the "pinch" method still works just fine, and Kleenex continues to be a strong and absorbent product. And I'll remember to use the Vaseline tonight, I assure you.

I will leave you with a video that will please both trumpet fans and swimmers. Enjoy it, and have a great day!