We've Got A BLEEDER!

Look away, my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel! Look away. Block out the picture. Read if you dare. I know you do not enjoy this type of tale. The title alone should be enough warning. Let the record show that my life fluid cannot jump out of the screen and splatter you. You are safe. But if you don't care to delve deeper into my spewing artery exposition, I understand.

Thursday night, as I sat in front of my New Delly in my lit basement lair (there's a reason for that which we won't go into right now), I absentmindedly scratched an itch on my right inner elbow. I went on perusing the innernets. I had stopped to watch the Big Brother live eviction with The Pony, so my schedule was a bit off.

Normally, right after supper, I take my everyday aspirin prescribed for blood-thinning purposes, which is much preferable to that demon Xarelto. But Thursday, I was late getting supper ready, and it was going on 8:00 by the time I finished eating and popped that 325 mg acetylsalicylic acid tablet. After our show, I went back to my lair around 9:30. I itched. And I scratched. People do it all the live-long day.

Those people are most likely not taking an over-the-counter blood thinner for the rest of their lives.

After I scratched, I itched again. I looked down before scratching, to see if, perhaps, there was a critter crawling in the bend of my elbow. And this is what I saw.

Okay. That is what I saw AFTER blotting the area twice with a Puffs With Aloe, and after my shirtsleeve slipped into the crimson pool, and after I tried to put some ice water from my bubba cup on the shirtsleeve to rinse out the aftereffects of my almost-exsanguination. Sweet Gummi Mary! I thought I was going to need a case of those meat tray pads to catch all my juices. You'd have thought I was trapped, and deliberately sawing my arm off to escape.

The instigator of this whole episode was just a tiny skin tag in the bend of my elbow. Not even as big as a mosquito bite. There it is, after several more blottings.

Still, being a bleeder with thin blood is much preferable to being a clotter with multiple bilateral pulmonary embolisms that send you to the hospital for three days after nearly suffocating the life out of you.

I'd say my over-the-counter blood-thinner is working just fine.