Eye Of The Tiger

So you may remember this fun little medical emergency? 

Apparently I’m prone to random and weird eye stuff.

I was in a meeting Tuesday morning when I noticed a little bit of cloudiness in my left eye. Almost like my contact lens was foggy. I did the whole blink a million times thing and I couldn’t get it to go away.  After the meeting I came back to my office and realized I had no contact solution or eye drops. Way to be prepared.

I got caught up doing a few things so it took me a while to run to get solution. By that time it was really cloudy and I’m thinking I really need to get this contact out.  But when I did, the cloudiness was still there. I looked in the mirror and noticed my pupil was clouded over. Hummm, that’s not good.

So I make an appointment with an Ophthalmologist. By this time, the eye is beginning to water. Which is more than mildly annoying.  And a little alarming – why am I leaking?

My husband was in meetings so I couldn’t reach him – I just drove myself.  I’ve taken out my contacts, don’t have my glasses and am down to one eye. One pretty blind eye at that.  Did I mention that I only had one hand on the steering wheel because the other hand was busy holding a tissue to my now constantly watering eye? But no worries, I only drove like 20 miles per hour. 

As I check in my eye begins to burn. Are you kidding me? What is this?? Of course, they squeezed me in so it took forever to even get me back. I’m sitting in the waiting area hunched over in pain, with a tissue to my eye and tears pouring down my face. No wonder everyone sat on the opposite side of the room.

The first thing the nurse did was put numbing drops in my eye. Oh. My. God. That was the best feeling in the world. Like instant relief. Talk about liquid gold.

Then they put me out in the hall to wait for the doc.

For thirty minutes.

And those drops are good but they aren’t that good because my eye was on fire again by the time they finally called me back.

He spent a lot of time with me and said a lot of “hummm”s . At the end he said I had a lot of fluid on my cornea but he couldn’t identify a reason why. He said usually that’s caused by three things: injury to the eye (no evidence), infection (no evidence) or lack of oxygen from wearing contacts (no evidence). So he decided to treat me for all three.

This is what it looks like when they only dilate one eye.

After some expensive medications, I’m all fixed up and good to go. I’m also keenly aware that I’m getting older and starting to fall apart!