How to deal with nosebleeds and how to get rid of blood stains

I know. Birruva shock for a Sunday morning, and not a post involving the beating together of diabetes and cardiac arrest inducing amounts of sugar and butter.

Sorry.

But I have a cold. A really bad one and the incessant blowing of my nose has made my nose bleed lots.

I've had nose bleeds since I was about seven. I remember my first one because it was traumatic. Let me tell you about it.

Crossroads had just started. Crossroads was a very bad soap opera based in a motel. Television could be brilliant or very poor back in those days. As the opening titles finished and Benny with his woolly hat came on, like a runaway from the children's programme Rainbow, my  nose started bleeding. And bleeding. And bleeding.

My mum rang the GP who gave us the totally wrong advice to put  my head back and pinch my nose. All this did was make the blood run down my throat into my stomach. Half an hour later I still had a nose bleed but then also puked up a stomach full of blood. Which alarmed everyone. I could hear Crossroads finishing.

Still my nose bleed. Eventually of course it stopped. But I learned something useful.

You don't stop a nosebleed by putting your head back. This is how they always show it on TV. That's about as helpful as showing women labouring on their back. I think it's about camera angles.

If you have a nosebleed and you have no other health problems, like suffering from haemophilia then the way to stop it is to lean forward. Pinch the affected nostril hard. Not at the top of your nose, the fleshy part so you close that nostril. Wait for about three minutes, by which time your natural blood clotting soldiers will have come in and fought the battle.

What you may then find is a big clot coming out of your  nose. Don't panic. This is normal. At least, it's normal for me and those whose nose bleeds I've observed.

I'm so adept at dealing with nosebleeds now I mostly get on and do other things when I have them. Unless I get a simultaneous nose bleed in both nostrils, like I did when I was pregnant and when I have colds. That's not so fun, but the same principles apply. I'm so confident now that when my nosebleed has stopped, I gently blow it to get the clot out and carry on with my day.

Eeuww. But look this might be useful one day.

Now then: blood stains. Obviously you can't deal with huge ones this way, well not without spending all day spitting. But this morning I got a bit of blood on my sheets as I was trying to stem the nose bleed from both nostrils. Damn I thought, I've only just changed the bed. Then I remembered a trick I picked up from when I used to write the Dear Annie columns.

Your saliva, apparently, has enzymes to dissolve your own blood. Or something like that. So I spat - or to put it another way, transferred saliva - onto the stain and the blood disappeared like magic. Really it's incredible (the fresher the stain the more effective the saliva is). It only works on your own blood though, so if you've killed someone, you can't get rid of evidence this way.

Anyone fancy a sleepover?