The condition facing a man in Antioch, Tenn., can only be summed up as bloody strange.
Seven years ago, blood began pouring out of Michael Spann's eyes, ears, mouth and nose on a daily basis.
These days, the plasma only pours out a few times a week, but the condition remains painful, debilitating and unexplained, Newser.com reported.
Spann has tried to work, but his bleeding presents challenges that go beyond typical disabilities.
“Any job I get I lose because my eyes start bleeding and they can’t keep me on,” Spann told The Tennessean, “Obviously, I can’t be a waiter and work in any public thing because you are bleeding.”
He won't even allow the bleeding to be photographed.
Spann's mother, Peggy, says whenever he's talking to someone new, his eyes will start filling up with blood.
“They haven’t seen it before, and it will scare the living daylights out of them," she told the paper. "It is very frustrating not to be able to treat or even get some kind of remission for it.”
Memphis-based ophthalmologist Dr. James "Chris" Fleming said determining the exact cause is difficult because the exploratory procedures might cause more harm than good, he said.
"There probably is a cause, but it is a small tear duct that is only a millimeter or two or three in diameter," Fleming said, according to WTSP.com. "It's a tube. To get into that tube and examine that tube from one end to the other would cause scarring, and you could lose part of the tear duct."
Doctors haven't diagnosed Spann, but earlier this year, Yaritza Oliva, a 20-year-old Chilean woman, reported crying blood as well.
Doctors suspected she suffered from haemolacria, a physical condition that causes a person to produce tears that are partially composed of blood.
Haemolacria isn't the only cause of bleeding eyeballs, though.
In March, a Canadian man started weeping tears of blood after suffering a potentially-deadly snake bite in Costa Rica. The bleeding stopped after he received antidote to the venom.
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