When you buy through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it ferment .
A young valet de chambre from Tennessee is living with an alarming aesculapian condition — without warning , he begins to hemorrhage from his eyes . And some of the best doctors in the country are completely stumped by his ailment .
What ’s more bedevil is that the stipulation is very rare , but some of the only other hoi polloi known to phlebotomise from the eyes — a condition call haemolacria — are also from Tennessee .
Calvino Inman first noticed haemolacria - bleeding from the eyes - as a teenager in 2009.
At age 22 , Michael Spann was walk down the steps of his home in Antioch , Tenn. , when he was gripped by an extremely unspeakable headache . " I matt-up like I got hit in the drumhead with a sledgehammer , " he told theTennessean . Moments later , Spann realized that blood was trickling from his eye , nozzle and mouth . [ The 13 Oddest Medical Case Reports ]
The bleeding andheadachesbecame a day-after-day occurrence for Spann ; now , about seven year later , they happen only once or twice a workweek . Though he ’s hinder by a lack of health indemnity , doctors in Tennessee and at the Cleveland Clinic performed an exhaustive series of tests , but were ineffective to pinpoint a case or recommend a treatment , according to news reports .
' consider I was run low to choke '
In 2009 , Calvino Inman was shocked by what he saw in his lavatory mirror : blood streaming from his eyes . " I attend up and go out myself , and I thought I was going to pass , " he toldCNN . The teenager from Rockwood , Tenn. , was hie to the local emergency room , but Doctor could tender no insights into the perplexing case . A battery of mental test — including a CT scan , anMRI(magnetic resonance imaging ) and an ultrasound — offered no cue .
The phenomenon of haemolacria has pose medico for centuries . In the 16th century , Italian Dr. Antonio Brassavola described a nun who , or else of menstruating , would bleed from her eyes and ears each calendar month . In 1581 , Flemish doctor Rembert Dodoens examined a 16 - year - old girl " who discharged her flow throughout the center , as drop of blinking tears , instead of through the womb , " according to a 2011 account in the daybook The Ocular Surface .
Dr. Barrett G. Haik , director of the University of Tennessee ’s Hamilton Eye Institute in Memphis , co - authored a 2004 critique of four make out cases of haemolacria , published in the diary Ophthalmic Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery . The authors concluded that " bloody tearing is an unusual clinical entity that concerns patient and can perplex MD . " However , such " cases typically resolve without treatment . "
Indeed , in each of the four cases retrospect , the patients — one son and three girls , age 6 to 14 — simply stopped weep blood , and the condition never return . Haemolacria can be because of ahead trauma or other harm , but these casing , like Inman ’s and Spann ’s , were idiopathic ( of unknown cause ) . " When you ca n’t discover an origin , you ca n’t eliminate any of the possibilities , " Haik evidence CNN .
" Most of these were relatively untested patient , " Dr. James Fleming , an ophthalmologist at the Hamilton Eye Institute and carbon monoxide - author of the 2004 review , told the Tennessean . " As they mature , the bleeding decreased , settle and then stopped . "
A sequestered life
Until the bleeding stops , Spann — a talented artist who had hoped to pursue a calling in style design — is squeeze to live a reclusive aliveness . " Any job I get , I recede , because my eye bulge bleeding and they ca n’t keep me on , " Spann said . " patently , I ca n’t be a waiter and work in any public thing because you are bleeding . "
He is also impel to live with derision : " I have kids that ride by on bicycle in this neighborhood who point and say , ' That ’s the guy who bleed , ' " Spann told the Tennessean . " I really do n’t need more than that . " Spann has taste to contact Inman to apportion his ordeal with a beau sufferer , but was ineffectual to join with him .
