When my youngest brother was born, he had a lot of health issues. He was small for his age and had to go to Mayo Clinic multiple times in a year for check ups, scans, and procedures. He always had bags under his eyes and looked sick even if he wasn't. He had mega bowel, immune deficiency, Failure To Thrive (FTT), and a mis-shaped kidney, which required him to have a catheter done at least four times a day. Just when he grew out of his conditions, he was diagnosed with a blood disorder.

Von Willebrand is a blood disorder where your blood clots release too early, so you bleed and bleed and bleed. One of the most common symptoms of this bleeding disorder is excessive and sporadic nosebleeds. They have medicine that is supposed to help you clot, but if it doesn't work, you have to go to the ER to get a blood transfusion.

Honestly, it's stressful. Blood doesn't gross me out as much as it used to. He can get four unprovoked nosebleeds in a week. It's hard not to freak out and stay calm enough to take care of him when your bathroom looks like a crime scene. Just blood doesn't gross me out as much as it used to doesn't mean it doesn't bother me at all. I'm not surprised when I come home from school to visit on the weekends to an empty house, and a text from my mom that says "Isaac has a bleed. We'll be home from the ER later". In high school I used to wake up to blood all over the bathroom sink, and seeing his bedding in the laundry room after he got a nose bleed in the middle of the night.

He can't do any contact sports, because head injuries are the worst possible thing that could happen to him. He has to be careful roughhousing with our brother because he could get smacked in the face and have a bloody nose that lasts for over a half our. He's not scared of needles anymore, which makes me feel a baby because I'm 12 years older than he is. If you watch him in the hospital room, he'll just stick out his arm and be ready to get it over with. He can tell you more about his condition than I can, even though I'm supposed to be the big sister who knows everything about it when I'm watching my brothers the whole weekend.

Not everyone who has this disease has it so severe, but there are people who it worse than my brother does. The disease itself isn't stressful, it's the fact that you never know when a nosebleed can turn into a hospital visit.