Chilean 20-Year-Old Woman Cries Tears of Blood, Prompting Family to Ask for Help

A 20-year-old Chilean woman, Yaritza Oliva, is desperately seeking for help. Since June, Oliva has been crying blood tears several times a day, and doctors aren't quite sure why. Besides being frightening, this peculiar condition is also very painful: she described it "indescribable".

According to local reports, this young woman started to inexplicably bleed from her eyes, which left doctors stumped. After seeking medical assistance, doctors ruled out both an eye infection and conjunctivitis and believe she may be suffering from a rare condition known as haemolacria, although it has yet to be officially diagnosed. They have prescribed her eye drops to ease her pain.

Haemolacria is a condition that causes blood to either tinge a person's tears or become the entire composition of tears. Doctors neither know of a cause nor an effective treatment for it. Many do believe, however, that haemolacria is a symptom of blood-related diseases and tumors, although Oliva hasn't been officially diagnosed with the rare condition.

"Nobody know what to give me, they don't know what I have. They don't know what to do", Oliva told TVN 24Horas.

The young woman and her family said they do not have financial resources to go to a specialist, who could possilbly determine the cause of the bleeding. Without a clear diagnosis, her parents have turned to their friends and neighbors in Purranque, Chile to help raise money for their daughter so that they can send her to an eye expert.

"Please put your hands over your hearts, see our situation and help my daughter", said her father, José, on a local news show. He hopes her condition can be studied properly by experts.

She is believe to be one of few people to suffer from this rare condition. In 2009, a teenage boy, Calvino Inman, was found to have similar symptoms, crying blood up to three times a day.

"Sometimes, I can feel it coming up, like a tear", said Inman at the time. "I feel my eyes watering. Sometimes, it will burn as it comes out. I've been called possessed by almost all my friends. I guess I'm used to it now. At first, it kind of hurt my feelings".

In March, a Canadian man began to cry tears of blood too. From his other symptoms, which included bleeding from various areas of his body, doctor determined a venomous snake bite was the culprit and administered an anti-venom.