My EYE!

When everything is working fine, you never really notice how great you have it… until it all goes wrong. Some weeks ago, I started having lots of trouble with my left eye. One day, I suddenly became aware of what felt like a tiny particle just under my left eyelid, and it was there all the time. Every time I would blink I could feel it. I bought lubricant eye drops to flush out my eye. I remember wiping my eye out and then blinking. It was still there. I flushed it again. Still there. After about three tries I gave up on it thinking I had over stimulated my eye with artificial drops.

Even though it bugged me, I let it slide for a few days. After a time, it actually started feeling worse so I finally decided to make an emergency eye appointment. One of the reasons I did it was because I’ve had a scratched cornea before (stupid me changed out of my glasses into my contact lenses outdoors and scratched my eye with a dust particle once) and it was bugging me in the same way so I thought I might get it looked at… just to be sure. The eye doctor told me it was just dryness and that there are many people suffering with eye dryness at this time of year who have been in to see him. He gave me a bottle of gel eye drops and sent me on my way. I used that bottle up until it was finished just like he had prescribed, but I still felt that darn particle under my eyelid.

Furthermore, I noticed that whenever I put on my contact lenses, my left eye would instantly feel like there was some particle under the lens and it drove me nuts. If you wear contacts, you know how painful and annoying this can be. My first reaction was to thoroughly rinse off my contact lens to get rid of the particle and then I put it back on. That feeling was still there. My next reaction was to throw out that set of disposable lenses thinking they were just old and needed changing. When I put on the fresh pair there was still no change to the eye particle-related pain.

Frustrated, I finally pulled out a tiny hand held mirror and moved into a well lit area to check out my own eye and then I saw it, a small lump of a clear, gel-like looking substance sitting on to top right corner of my left cornea. The other thing I noticed was my left eye was substantially redder than the right one. As a matter of fact there was a bunch of capillaries bunched around this funky growth that I had just discovered. I did something crazy: I picked at the growth with my fingernail. As soon as I touched it I could feel it move on my eye, and then I blinked again. I could feel it. It was the particle that I’d been feeling.

I spent pretty much all of yesterday dealing with my eye issues. First I spent more than three hours waiting to be seen at a walk-in clinic. When the doctor finally looked at it she told me I had developed a condition called Tur-ridge-gee-um (spelled Pterygium). She said a pterygium is a fleshy growth that invades the cornea (the clear front window of the eye). It is an abnormal process in which the conjunctiva (a membrane that covers the white of the eye) grows into the cornea. She was surprised when I told her that it bugs me to no end because she said often people don’t notice or aren’t bothered by it when they blink or wear contacts. She said it sounded to her like my Pterygium was symptomatic (meaning I feel pain from its presence), so she’s referring me to an eye surgeon to discuss the possibility of having it surgically removed. I hope I get the eye appointment sooner rather than later. It drives me bonkers all day, everyday.