By Esther Quintanilla

One morning in the summer of 2010 when I was 10 years old, I woke up in the early hours and felt something all over my face. It was hot in my room, so I figured it was sweat. I got up to rinse my face in the bathroom. Half-asleep, I turned on the light and turned to look at myself in the mirror.

I was covered in blood. I screamed.

My mom woke up and rushed to see what was happening. “There was a lot of blood,” she remembers. “We got scared seeing you. You were bleeding so much and it wouldn’t stop.”

I felt blood gushing out my nose and grabbed toilet paper to try to plug it. My mom sat me down on the edge of the bathtub and replaced the toilet paper with a beach towel. She called out for my dad, and he ran in with an ice pack to cool my forehead.

But the nosebleed didn’t stop. For hours. Once the beach towel was soaked with blood, my parents called an ambulance. Over the phone, the 911 operator told my parents to put pressure on my nose to stem the bleeding and said they would be at our house as quickly as they could.

By the time the paramedics arrived, my nosebleed — almost miraculously – stopped. My parents were so relieved. The paramedics said I had lost a lot of blood, but I should be okay after I got some rest. They suggested a cause for my nosebleed: allergies because of Kern County’s notoriously polluted air.

My parents and I believed them. When I was just 10 years old, I started taking allergy medication every day, made sure to stay hydrated if I was outside and slathered my nose in Vaseline every night before bed.

But that summer, I couldn’t go more than a week without taking bundles of toilet paper, tissues or rags to my face to soak up the blood pouring out of my nose.

My parents were worried. They would anxiously helped me onto the couch, put cooled towels on my forehead and soothe me by telling their little girl everything was okay.

Finally, we went to the pediatrician to find out what was going on. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned.

“The doctor never gave us an answer as to why it was happening,” was my dad’s response when I asked him what the doctor said.

It’s funny how you get used to things. After a few weeks, we had a nosebleed routine. If I started bleeding, I would go straight to the bathroom, get toilet paper, sit down, lean my head back and pinch the bridge of my nose. Usually, the nosebleed would go away after a few minutes. And eventually, they went away altogether.

The mystery of my condition was never solved during my childhood. It was only much later that we began to link them to other things, like my entire family's health problems and the active oil field we lived next to.