I was making up a hundred excuses as to why I was going to skip posting tonight. Mostly because I am tired; today was just one of those days. Then the more I thought about it the more I knew I needed to do this tonight. End of story. I put my big girl eye drops in and here I sit, gently stroking the keys with a tale in my mind.
This past week has been nothing if not interesting and a little conflicted.
In an effort to try to bring in some extra income I was inquiring about selling a line a products that I know and use. The more I thought about it the more it dawned on me that I should use my energy to follow a passion, not just bring in some extra change. Again, here I sit.
I am going to commit myself to making some sort of income, no matter how feeble, off of my writing skills (and now the horror of any grammatical errors that may be painfully apparent in this post pops into my mind). I may dabble in some free lance stuff; I've already wrecked my chances with one online writing firm because I rushed through the application quiz after a long and typical Tuesday. Sad fact, there is no do overs with this firm. Oh, well. There are other options in the world.
After much pushing from outside intruders, I am also working to type a book. While doing this I am researching self-publishing and may or may not send the manuscript out to some publishing houses, but first one must have a manuscript... Right? One book that I am using as a rugged guide gave me a twisted challenge: for every chapter I read of his rough and tumble book I must take the time to pen a chapter of my own. Last night I put down about one thousand words. They may be rubbish but I figure it's a healthy start.
I hope to NOT detract from my posting on here, and still plan to share my little gems with you. Hell, most of what I post on here has little to no place in the book I am working on either. I may reach out to all of you as more words find their way onto the pages to see if there is interest in being Beta-Readers for the book. As more of it blossoms I will share the subject matter of the book and let you choose from there if there is an interest for you.
All that said, let's move on to the real fun of this past week and the reason this is my first post since the 20th.
I may or may not have mentioned issues related to my right eye in the past month. Quick recap: June 27th woke up with some irritation in my eye like I had been dealing with off and on since late March; no biggie went about my day. That night woke up in severe pain as it felt like my eye was being prodded by a burning fork while shards of glass moved about. I spent most of the 28th in misery barely able to open my eye. No drops relieved the pain. Previous occurrences had me believing I was dealing with repeated sties, but I had never had them before. I went online and was happy to see my doctor had an opening on the 29th at four something.
Monday morning dawned and I was exhausted and suffering, but off to work I went with eye patch in hand (we had purchased some cheap, uncomfortable thing the day before). Looking at my monitor was nigh impossible and the fluorescent lights were like staring into the bright noon time sun. I was in agony. On a lark I called my medical provider and explained my situation to the nice gal on the other end of the phone. Miraculously they had an immediate opening if I could head over right then. I snagged Collin and off we went.
Once there the doctor checked for foreign bodies - nada. Then he checked for sties - nada. Then he did a fluoracil on the eye; this is where they put fluorescent dye on the surface of your eye and look at it with a UV light. Before this he also blessed me with numbing eye drops. This was the best feeling since before this all started. He reported the presence of three scratches on my eye: one to either side and the third (like a bastard) straight down the middle. After all this, the doctor felt it may have been a form of sicca syndrome related to my psoriasis. Sicca syndrome commonly causes dry mouth and eyes. He gave me prescription for eye drops, ordered some labs to check my immune system (psoriasis being an auto-immune issue) and referred me to ophthalmology.
Fast forward three weeks to last week. Tuesday night I woke up to the all too familiar pain. Not again. I had been pretty much symptom free since the prescription eye drops kicked in around the 1st of July. The only blessing was that my follow up with ophthalmology was in five short hours. It didn't have a chance to get as severe as the previous episode.
I went in, explained all the symptoms, sensations and pain that I had dealt with. I explained the grainy, rock-like feeling when I would wake up. I expressed the discomfort caused by light and even the movement of my eyeball. The doctor took a good look at my eye and performed another fluoracil on my eye. After all of this she informed me it was not sicca syndrome, but she knew exactly what it was.
Brace yourself, the name is pretty self-explanatory:
Reoccurring Corneal Erosion Syndrome
In layman's terms, my eyelid is trying to peal my cornea off of my eyeball. Well, at least it is with the first layer. The way she described it was a little better... I guess. The first layer of the cornea is extremely delicate and it attaches to the other layers with tiny legs or tendrils. What happens when a person has the aforementioned syndrome is that their eyelid's mucus membrane dries out (typically at night) and sticks to the cornea. When the eye moves or attempts to open without proper lubrication the eyelid begins to tear the first layer of the cornea off. Given there are so many nerves in the eyeball it is EXCRUCIATINGLY painful. Thankfully, the cornea is one of the parts of human anatomy with the fastest healing time. By the time I was at this appointment she could tell that it was already repairing itself.
I am grateful I finally have an answer as to why this was happening. Better yet, we have a treatment plan. Yes, this is something that is completely curable. It just requires me to put an ointment that has a similar consistency to antibiotic ointment in my eye, every night, before bed. This helps retain the moisture in my eye and provides a protective layer. During the day I am to administer one to two drops three to four times a day to keep the eye well hydrated. I go back for another follow up on the 10th, and barring any further incidents I just need to be sure I keep my eye ball happily hydrated as needed.
If I go in and we find that things aren't healing up as they should, the next treatment option is a contact bandage. Basically, they would place a clear lens over my eye to keep the cornea moist and protected. I would need to wear this for TWO MONTHS with visits every other week to have them change the bandage. Um, no, thank you, please.
The doctor didn't even want to talk about the next step AFTER the bandage should it also not be a viable treatment option because it would mean I get to go visit the corneal specialist. Good people I am sure, but yea, no.
She is confident the first treatment plan she has prescribed will work. I am too. So far, so good. I just need to remember to put my drops in when I am at work. Once it clears up the eye drops will be completely on an as needed basis.
With this, I had kind of taken a break from here since I spend eight hours of my day staring at a monitor for work. This is one of the things that does not help the issue. Apparently, there are a lot of things that can exacerbate this syndrome; dry air, air conditioning, heat, not blinking enough, staring at a computer screen too long, and so on.
I will keep you all posted as to how the follow up goes.
Next post: Why the hell have I never made granola before??
No comments:
Post a Comment