Mamarati

The ER said corneal abrasion, but when I got to the ophthalmologist, he said it was recurrent corneal erosion.

I haven’t written about this yet… in fact I’ve been doing a little less work and writing and all that sort of thing in favor of having days where I do nothing but lay in bed all day in a completely darkened room hopped up on hydrocodone while applying copious amounts of tetracaine to my eyeball.

It’s a good time.

That’s not been the be-all, end-all of my existence since I wrote about my ER visit. In fact, I’ve had some pretty good days. I even had a stretch there where I was virtually pain-free and was able to get caught up on lots of things. I could go outside and the light didn’t cause me supreme pain and confusion like I was stuck in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

And then it started happening again. I started waking up with my eyelid stuck to my eyeball. Once again, it was time to hop on board the effin’ pain train. Chugga Chugga Ughleavemealone.

Two days ago, I did it three times. I don’t even know what it was that was waking me up. I’ve trained myself to wake up gently without trying to open my eyes. Try this some time. You’ll see it’s not easy. It’s a like a reflex to open your eyes. You hear a loud noise, open your eyes. Your baby is crying, open your eyes. A lot of light in the room, open your eyes. Loud ass thunder, open your eyes. The alarm goes off, open your eyes. The phone rings, you open your eyes. You just do it. I’m glad I don’t have a baby crying and waking up every few hours or I probably wouldn’t have an eyeball left.

The worst part of what happened this week is that my training was failing me. Because my eyes felt like they had rolled up into my head in some way and gotten stuck to my eyelid like that instead of getting stuck the normal way. So not only did my eyes want to open, they wanted to roll back down into the normal seeing position. I literally could not stop the two from ripping apart.

Three times.

I was a zombie the next day.

Did I mention that your cornea is just jam friggin’ packed with nerve endings?

Good times.

Yesterday was a good day, though. Pain free.

Today, I have what my doctor called “foreign body sensation.” This does not mean that I thought I had the sense of having the body of Salma Hayek. No, instead it means that I feel like I have something in my eye, like a cat hair or an eyelash or a shard of glass or a metal fragment or like, an axe or something. But really, nothing is there. No matter how many times I look, no matter how many eyelashes I pluck. There’s nothing really there.

And it’s odd that nothing is there. Because my eye is getting redder and redder and hurting more and more. It seems to me that something should be causing that, but I guess it’s just the persistent dryness and my eyelid dragging across the wounded areas.

I was supposed to go back to the doctor yesterday, but I had to reschedule and I’m glad. Because he said that they were going to have to do phototherapeutic keratectomy if it wasn’t healing properly. I’ve been looking around and it looks like this might not even get it on the first go around, but that the second go is very successful. He gave me this stuff called Muro 128. I use the 2 percent drops every four hours during the day and I use the 5 percent mayonnaise ointment during the night. I’m writing that mainly for my fellow eyelid-stuck-to-eyeball-in-the-morning comrades who are coming here via Google. I see you guys. I know your pain. You’re not imagining what is happening. Get to the doctor. I also use TheraTears Liquid Gel for lubrication since I have a variety of issues going on that dry my eyes out (not very much tear production, sleep with my eyes partly open, dry house, fans, allergies and thus antihistamines that are drying, I don’t drink enough water, my hormones are all jacked up, lots of computer use thus less blinking, it goes on and on really. My lifestyle is no friend to my eyeballs.) I’ve also started taking TheraTears Nutrition for Dry Eyes to help increase tear production naturally and I eat oily fish about 9 trillion times a week now. Again, get to the doctor, Googler. Or Yahooligan…

Anyway, I’m glad I rescheduled, because I think I want just a couple more weeks to try to get it on the road to healing before he decides what to do. Maybe I can avoid that procedure. I mean, they basically scrape across your entire cornea and then cross their fingers that it heals right. It’s a bit like rebreaking someone’s arm when they have a bad break so that it will heal better… to get a “cleaner” break… And I’m sorry, but I am going to go ahead and cross my fingers for it to heal some more with what I’m doing now. The thought of them scraping my eyeball results in waves of nausea.

Right now, I’m going to take some hydrocodone and lay down and put some more mayo in my eye.