May contain eye details to make you squick
Jun. 2nd, 2006 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanaiseI went to the eye doctor this morning. A little backstory: i only wear one contact, in my left eye. (the left eye is 20/300, the right eye is about 20/60, and I had issues with it and contacts, so I usually just correct the left eye) Over the last week my eye has progressed from "hmm, that's kinda red" to "wow, that's actively painful and my contact dries out in three minutes." It also is mildly photosensitive (though it's always been more delicate in light than the other, it's been really bad lately.) I was 95% sure it's allergies, but even if it's just a little irritation, it's still an area of my body that I don't really want to damage, so I made an appointment yesterday and got in today. (and I made the appointment even though it wasn't *really* bothering me at the time, but was so glad last night to know that I'd go see the eye doctor in the morning because it went super painful by like 9:30 last night.)
The doctor was new-to-me, though very nice (Dr. Noel, Chance. I can't remember the name of my usual doctor). For a change, she didn't make a big deal about the fact that I don't have back-up glasses, and actually explained why she didn't think this was surprising (glasses make the size of the image differ between eyes, and the differences between prescriptions in my case is so high that the images are vastly different sizes, thus my brain can't easily switch between contacts (which don't do this) and the glasses.) She looked at my eye, then made me throw out my contact ("Just put it in the square hole over there," she said, and I suspected I wasn't going to get to wear it home.) And put in yellow stuff (to check for scratches, I think) and used the blue light extensively, but I think I managed to not scratch it because she didn't frown at me. And then she proved to her satisfaction that my eye is photosensitive (owowow), but my right eye (the non-contacted eye) is fine.
So the diagnosis is no contact in it for a week.
She did fit me with a contact for my good eye, which a very new experience. Because I don't have glasses, my eyes are used to switching between 'good' eyes--during the day, it's my left eye. at night after I've taken out my contacts, it's my right eye. So it's a little disconcerting to have everything *so* clear on my right side, but not completely alien. Like I said, it's not that bad in general, so this is just a baby step better. And it's a new contact, so hopefully my eye will be okay with it. The problems with it were irritation, back in the day, but that was 7 years ago, and in contact lenses that's about a million years ago. So we're trying Acuvue Oasys or something like that, which I'd suspected would be a good contact to switch to in general as I have some problems in my bad eye with blood vessels growing into the cornea--apparently a side effect of my eye not getting enough oxygen--but hadn't actually called my eye care professional about because I still had most of a box left to go through, and that's just a waste, since apparently you can't do anything with the leftover contacts (unless one of you people know something useful to do with them, like the places you can donate old glasses to.). So even if I still end up not wearing a contact in my right eye, I will push to get the new ones for my left eye.
Oh, and I don't know what the offical diagnosis for it is, I forgot to ask, and she didn't say speficially. I think it's just badly irritated. She dilated my bad eye and said it will be like that for a couple of days--apparently the muscle in it was spasming, and that was causing the pain. I don't remember it being painful in any way that I thought was inside, butI will trust her there. And I have drops to put in it every 4 hours. TobraDex. It's apparently a steriod (anti-inflamatory) with an antibiotic. From the notes, I think the antibiotic is mostly just as a preventative thing, the steroid is the important bit (the steriod slows healing while it slows inflamation, the antibiotic is to make sure this doesn't cause any problems by stomping out the bad germs ahead of time.)
And I have a follow up appointment for next tuesday, and I'm guessing I'm leaving work early today as I'm working with my glasses on because everything is too bright otherwise. WAAAAY too bright. I'm to try wearing the contact in my good eye, but if it doesn't work, I'll just have to suck it up and go uncorrected. So more details to follow if necessary.
The doctor was new-to-me, though very nice (Dr. Noel, Chance. I can't remember the name of my usual doctor). For a change, she didn't make a big deal about the fact that I don't have back-up glasses, and actually explained why she didn't think this was surprising (glasses make the size of the image differ between eyes, and the differences between prescriptions in my case is so high that the images are vastly different sizes, thus my brain can't easily switch between contacts (which don't do this) and the glasses.) She looked at my eye, then made me throw out my contact ("Just put it in the square hole over there," she said, and I suspected I wasn't going to get to wear it home.) And put in yellow stuff (to check for scratches, I think) and used the blue light extensively, but I think I managed to not scratch it because she didn't frown at me. And then she proved to her satisfaction that my eye is photosensitive (owowow), but my right eye (the non-contacted eye) is fine.
So the diagnosis is no contact in it for a week.
She did fit me with a contact for my good eye, which a very new experience. Because I don't have glasses, my eyes are used to switching between 'good' eyes--during the day, it's my left eye. at night after I've taken out my contacts, it's my right eye. So it's a little disconcerting to have everything *so* clear on my right side, but not completely alien. Like I said, it's not that bad in general, so this is just a baby step better. And it's a new contact, so hopefully my eye will be okay with it. The problems with it were irritation, back in the day, but that was 7 years ago, and in contact lenses that's about a million years ago. So we're trying Acuvue Oasys or something like that, which I'd suspected would be a good contact to switch to in general as I have some problems in my bad eye with blood vessels growing into the cornea--apparently a side effect of my eye not getting enough oxygen--but hadn't actually called my eye care professional about because I still had most of a box left to go through, and that's just a waste, since apparently you can't do anything with the leftover contacts (unless one of you people know something useful to do with them, like the places you can donate old glasses to.). So even if I still end up not wearing a contact in my right eye, I will push to get the new ones for my left eye.
Oh, and I don't know what the offical diagnosis for it is, I forgot to ask, and she didn't say speficially. I think it's just badly irritated. She dilated my bad eye and said it will be like that for a couple of days--apparently the muscle in it was spasming, and that was causing the pain. I don't remember it being painful in any way that I thought was inside, butI will trust her there. And I have drops to put in it every 4 hours. TobraDex. It's apparently a steriod (anti-inflamatory) with an antibiotic. From the notes, I think the antibiotic is mostly just as a preventative thing, the steroid is the important bit (the steriod slows healing while it slows inflamation, the antibiotic is to make sure this doesn't cause any problems by stomping out the bad germs ahead of time.)
And I have a follow up appointment for next tuesday, and I'm guessing I'm leaving work early today as I'm working with my glasses on because everything is too bright otherwise. WAAAAY too bright. I'm to try wearing the contact in my good eye, but if it doesn't work, I'll just have to suck it up and go uncorrected. So more details to follow if necessary.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:25 pm (UTC)*points*
That's so awesome.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:30 pm (UTC)I'm glad my pain amuses *someone*.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:32 pm (UTC)I love you?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 05:27 pm (UTC)Sorry, the Count just popped into my head there...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 08:15 pm (UTC)And assume is an anagram of amuses!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:38 pm (UTC)As I stood to get off the bus, a man rushed up to me and said: "You're a good-lookin' woman and you could find someone else if you wanted to. Leave him. He's no good for you."
Armed with this strange knowledge (I had not been discussing my extremely nice husband at the time), I went home. Then I saw myself in the mirror: it looked like I had a very old, awful bruise under my eye, from where the yellow stuff leaked out.
hee!
That poor man was probably screwing up his courage the entire 20-minute bus ride, too.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:47 pm (UTC)The wife of one of my friends once literally walked into a wall (middle of the night, half asleep, something like that) and, if I remember correctly, she had been wearing her glasses so she ended up with a big bad circular bruise all around one eye. When they'd go grocery shopping, all the women would glare at the husband. I told him he should just be glad that his wife (an actress) didn't cringe away from him at the grocery when the two of them figured out why they were being stared at, or the women probably would have lynched him.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 05:22 pm (UTC)I'm glad you went in: it sounds as if it would have been more trouble later and hopefully the new kind of contacts will much, much better.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 05:29 pm (UTC)Uhmmmmmmm, how disturbing.
Date: 2006-06-03 03:12 am (UTC)Especially if it gave you superpowers!
Rick in China
Re: Uhmmmmmmm, how disturbing.
Date: 2006-06-03 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 04:51 am (UTC)I had similar problems with one dilated pupil and one not (yep, steroid eye drops), so I had one contact lens and bought an eye patch from a costume store and wore it for a week. I got so many pirate jokes...
Still, the funniest memory from that week is getting 9½/10 on my biology practical, which had involved extensive use of microscopes. My tutor wrote on the front: "Without eye infection, 8/10. With eye infection, 9½/10. Can you please infect the rest of the class?"
Hope you feel better soon!
--Mike