So I’ve been really downplaying how I’m feeling about what’s going on with my eye, mostly because it makes me so upset that I don’t really want to talk about it. The truth: I’ve been in constant discomfort for awhile now, and am literally frightened to go to sleep every night because I know that the first thing that will happen in the morning is that I will re-injure my eye simply by opening it (I won’t go into more details about this; suffice it to say it’s gross, and extremely painful, and it happens every day).
I’m embarrassed that I did this to myself, and I’m frightened that the pain and the puffiness will never go away; that I’ve done permanent damage either in terms of how the eye functions, and/or how it looks and feels (which is why I waited so long to make a doctor’s appointment – well, that and we were switching insurance companies, and I wanted everything to be ironed out before I went).
I wrote about what’s going on briefly the other day, and later that night I got an email from reader Nicole that had me in tears, because she described exactly what was happening to me, and told me that she had experienced the same thing (she hurt her eye on a tree branch)…and that she was now better. She said that she thought I was suffering from corneal erosion, and it turns out that she was right. I went to the doctor this morning and discovered that I have “extreme dry eye” in both eyes and corneal erosion in my right eye (basically, the original wound won’t heal because I keep re-injuring it by doing things like…blinking).
I’ve been prescribed a 6-month regimen of bazillions of different eye drops and allergy medications, and have been ordered to start icing the area daily with a package of frozen peas, using a humidifier, and drinking tons and tons of water. All of this is fine by me.
I just want to get better.
