About 1 or 2 months ago my 85 year old father was hospitalized from internal bleeding aparantly through his colon. This re-occurred a few weeks later. In Dad's case it wasn't that surprising. He has heart problems that cause his heart to be operating at around 35% of capacity. This is the result of inherited heart problems he has had for a very long time. Because of this he took a blood thinner for a very long time to reduce the risk of mini-strokes from blood clots. Dad was taken off the blood thinner and he is taking low dose aspirin as a trade-off.

My Mom has been in generally very good health. Some years back she was diagnosed with diabetes and she controls that with diet and daily walking. Mom is 81. They were divorced a long time ago. Yesterday I learned that Mom had been passing blood from both ends and due to loss of blood she had fallen and was having trouble getting up. She was on the phone with her sister and her brother took her to the ER. They have so far done endoscopic tests on her esophagus and stomach and found a polyp but no explanation for the bleeding. They plan to do a colonoscopy tomorrow. In the meanwhile she has received blood transfusions and is better but still weak and losing blood. In my Mom's case it is utterly surprising to all of us in the family how this internal bleeding could come on to Mom in the same time frame as Dad given the much healthier condition Mom is usually in. Neither Mom nor Dad have ever been out of the USA. They live in North Mississippi far away from any known Ebola incidents and other than the bleeding don't seem to have any Ebola like symptoms.

This has made me wonder if there is any sort of "bug" going around that makes a person more prone to internal bleeding. Have any of you heard of or experienced anything like this lately?