Like many contact lens wearers, I’m acutely aware of my eyes. So, on Wednesday when my eye was a little dry and irritated, I blamed my contact lens. I worked at home on Thursday, wore my glasses and it felt completely fine. Just to be safe, I switched to a new pair on Friday and wore them without a problem. So, when I woke up Saturday morning to a red eye that was screaming in pain, I was a little surprised (and upset about it.)
T and I briefly discussed calling the 24-hour consulting nurse hotline that Group Health offers, but with all of the cooking activities we both forgot about it. So on Sunday, when it was a little better pain-wise but I realized that the weird smudge I kept trying to wipe off my glasses was in fact on my eye, we decided to call. The nurse advised we go to urgent care, which is never my favorite thing, but I didn’t want to mess around with my eyesight.
I’ve only been to urgent care one other time – on New Years Eve day in 1997, when a terrible flu necessitated a trip to a horrible hospital in Oakland (Highland Hospital for any Bay Area folks out there) where we shared the waiting area with a very dangerous convict who was strapped to a gurney Hannibal Lechter style. This, needless to say, was much more pleasant and the only other folks in the waiting area were a few elderly couples and one poor mom with a baby, who had the most terrible cough I’ve ever heard.
The nice urgent care doctor looked at my poor eye under many bright lights to make sure there wasn’t anything in there/it wasn’t scratched, etc. He diagnosed me with conjunctivitis (aka pink eye) which didn’t seem like what I had, but I assumed there were different strains, so I took the eye drops and went home.
Two days later, the drops not only didn’t have any effect but when I woke up this morning, the smudge had become worse. Luckily, eye doctors are open on Tuesday so I was able to make an appointment and get a much more plausible diagnosis: iritus. (Isn’t that the most made-up sounding disease you’ve ever heard of?) So, armed with another batch of drops, I believe I’m on the mend. The nice thing about iritus is that it isn’t contagious, so I don’t have to worry about spreading it to the boy and my friends. Plus the drops they’ve given me seem to be working, so hopefully it will be all cleared up soon.
So, the jury is still out on 2011…