Break Your Nose?

In the movies, the hero who is punched in the nose or breaks his nose by being shoved into a wall has a little bleeding and later wears a white plaster bandage over the injury. His broken nose always comes out from under the bandage as if he had never fractured it.

In the real world, a broken nose can be diagnosed by its graphic symptoms and rarely mends to look like it did before it was fractured. My daughter broke her nose four years ago in a rollerblading accident when she was nine years old. Her nose has not been the same since.

Bleeding is one of the first things which will happen as soon as a nose breaks by making contact with an object, whether the object is a fist or asphalt, as in the case of my daughter. My daughter walked into the house crying, with blood streaming down the lower half of her face. I could not tell at first if she was bleeding from her nose, from her mouth, or from both. After having her open her mouth to check for a lacerated tongue or broken teeth, I gently swabbed her face with a cold wet washcloth to remove the blood.

I instructed her to lie on the couch with her head tipped slightly back to try to stop the nosebleed. If her nose had continued to bleed for thirty minutes or longer, more serious injuries could be indicated and she would require an emergency room visit.

Her nose was beginning to swell, another of the symptoms of a broken nose. To reduce the swelling and to prevent some of the bruising on the bridge of the nose, I made an ice pack from a plastic sandwich bag and ice cubes with a towel wrapped around it. She kept the pack on her nose for an hour or longer.

A broken nose can often make one or both eyes bruise. My daughter's only bruising was on the bridge of her nose.

Another symptom of a broken nose, tenderness, was obvious whenever she adjusted the ice pack. The pain and the swelling from a fractured nose should begin to reduce in about three days after the injury.

While we were attempting to stop the nosebleed, she had a little difficulty breathing through the mucus and blood. When her broken nose stopped bleeding, she was able to somewhat clear her nasal passages of the blood and experienced no further difficulty breathing.

When some people break their noses, the nose looks crooked afterward. In my daughter's case, she has a hump in approximately the center of the nose bridge.

One of the final symptoms of a broken nose will not be immediately apparent since the fractured nose will be tender for a while after the injury. When our daughter tries to move her nose slightly from side to side, she can hear a slight crackling sound. In other people, the sound is more like a crunch.

If other symptoms manifest, such as fainting, severe headaches, or clear fluid being discharged from the nostrils, the patient should be taken to the emergency room. After an injury to the nose, the injured party's condition should be carefully monitored for several hours to make sure there is not serious damage to the head or neck.

Sources:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/broken_nose/article_em.htm