Michael Spann, a 29-year-old from Antioch, Tennessee, has been crying blood for seven years, reports the New York Daily News.  Once or twice a week, Spann gets a severe headache and then bleeds from his eyes, as well as his ears, mouth, and nose.  While Spann knows of others with a similar condition in Tennessee, they have never bled from their ears.  He wonders whether he actually has the same condition in a more severe form, or a completely different condition.

Spann, an artist who likes sketching, aspires to being a fashion designer with his own clothing line, but said his medical condition has kept him from attending college or holding down a job.  Unfortunately, his condition is difficult to evaluate because any invasive procedure of the tear duct is dangerous.  Small tear ducts are only one to three millimeters in diameter.  The tear duct is a tube shape.  Getting into it will cause scarring, could cause part of the tear duct to be lost permanently, and may result in a disability.

Currently, Spann remains isolated in his home.  He feels ostracized by neighbors, knowing that kids on their bikes outside point to his home and they tell their friends that he is the man who bleeds.  Spann hopes to be able to go out in public again, but at the moment, remains in his home as much as possible.

In 2009, a teenager who cried tears of blood made a plea for help from medical experts, reports CNN Health.  Dr. James C. Flemming, an ophthalmologist at the Hamilton Eye Institute, got into touch with the teenager and his mom.  He reviewed the medical records to determine a possible cause.  Flemming suggested they look for complications including blood clots, a growth or tumor near the eye, or even a simple infection.  Doctors also have to be observant and wait for other symptoms to show up because it could be something seemingly unrelated.

The condition of crying tears is known as haemolacria, which is common in people who have experienced extreme trauma or who have recently had a serious head injury.  A study in Acta Opthamology, a journal published in Denmark, studied the occurrence of blood in tears in 125 otherwise healthy subjects.  The researchers tested for the presence of blood in tears, though the mere presence of blood may not have been visually as striking as Spann’s condition of blood pouring from the eyes.  For women, the condition appeared most often during the first week of the menstrual cycle.  For men, local factors, such as bacterial conjunctivitis and injury, most often provoked the condition.