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Man's Bloody Tears Baffle Doctors

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Oct 21, 2013 04:46 PM EDT

Medical experts are baffled by a Tennessee man who cries blood.

Michael Spann, of Nashville, started crying blood at the age of 22, according to The Tennessean.

However, after seven years of countless tests and hospital visits, doctors are still unable to determine the cause explaining Spann's mysterious condition.

"I have a condition that I get these really bad headaches, and along with the headaches I bleed from my eyes," Spann told the local newspaper.

"I also bleed out of my mouth, my nose. There's ... other people who have what I have in Tennessee alone, which is strange, but (none) of them have ever bled out of their ears. So I don't know if I have an advanced version of whatever those people have, or something else entirely," he said.

Spann said that his first episode was excruciating, and that blood started running from his eyes, nose and mouth.

"I felt like I got hit in the head with a sledgehammer," he said "I never felt anything like it."

Afterwards, he started bleeding almost everyday. While it his condition has gotten better and bleeding episodes have become less frequent over the years, Spann said that he still cries blood once or twice a week.

While Spann has not been diagnosed with any actual treatable condition, medical experts at Cleveland Clinic told him that he has "a very rare idiopathic condition, a disease without an apparent cause."

The 29-year-old said that his condition has kept him from having a social life, attending college, and finding a job.

"Any job I get I lose because my eyes start bleeding and they can't keep me on," he said, according to the Daily News. "Obviously, I can't be a waiter and work in any public thing because you are bleeding."

"I have kids that ride by on bikes in this neighborhood who point and say, 'That's the guy who bleeds," he said.

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