Ouchie
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Not sure how it happened, but I have a corneal ulcer.
Last week, I woke up after a day of duty, and my eye was irritated and felt like perhaps a blood vessel had popped or something. I’d had the mid-watch (the midnight watch from 11:30 pm to 3:30 am) and hadn’t gotten much sleep; I also had little sleep the previous night. So, I chalked it up to stress.
The next day, my eye was still irritated, and it felt like some foreign material, like an eyelash or a grain of sand, had lodged itself in my eye. So, I went to see Doc. He had me irrigate it and gave me some erythromycin antibiotic cream ointment to put in it.
Five days later, it still feels like hell. My eye is sensitive to light now, and my vision is somewhat blurry. Doc (who is actually a highly trained corpsman) referred me to the optometrist, who put me SIQ. She dilated my eye and gave me a more powerful liquid antibiotic that I’ve been dropping into my eyes every couple of hours.
Apparently, when an injured eye doesn’t heal properly, the iris will spasm, which causes the blurry vision and photosensitivity. Curiously, even with the blurry vision, both eyes were still at least 20/20. Amazing. Also, this will probably leave a scar, which means very little since it isn’t in my field of vision and is on the part of the cornea just up under the eyelid.
I’ll keep you updated. I tried to take some pictures, but none of them really came out very good. It would have been gross, anyway.
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2 Responses to “Ouchie”
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August 16th, 2005 at 8:32 am
Ouchie indeed! I hope it feels better soon.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:01 am
That does not sound like any fun! Yikes! And the eye is nothing to mess around with. Glad you took care of it.
Ah yes, I remember the 11:30 to 3:00 a.m. shift’s my first husband used to do. Loads of fun those were. Ugh!