On the outside, I try to project an image of having it all together. But underneath that, I'm kind of a disaster. Hence... the name of the site: GlossyVeneer. On August 18 I was supposed to drive to Utah for work. I got up that morning, got ready, loaded my car with stuff and drove to the gas station. And when I got there my right eye suddenly blurred over. Completely blurred. As you might imagine, it was slightly panic-inducing.
I drove back home and cried a little to my husband about the situation, but closed my eyes and rested them for about 20 minutes. He told me that if the eye stayed blurry, obviously I would need to cancel my trip. But I’m stubborn and decided I was fine. So I switched into a brand new pair of contacts and started the drive.
I had to pull over twice on my way there, sitting in gas station parking lots desperately blinking (and crying a little) hoping my vision would clear enough. It was the longest drive for work EVER!
The next day I was still having problems and my eyes were starting to burn. I assumed the left eye was hurting because it was working extra hard to compensate for the non-functioning right eye. So I called an ophthalmologist in Utah and begged my way into an emergency appointment.
The doctor didn’t check things out very long. I tried telling him a little of my vision history, but he didn’t seem inclined to listen. He told me that I was having a reaction to my contacts and that I should go without them for a while and use a steroid/anti-inflammatory eye drop he prescribed (Tobradex) to help soothe my eyes.
I admit that I did cheat and wear my contacts a little to go running, but for the most part I wore my glasses. Glasses that are uncomfortable on my head and also damaging to my self-esteem. I just feel very… conspicuous in my spectacles.
And my eyes did feel a little soothed, but not much. The situation didn’t improve all that much. But I did my time in Utah for the rest of the week, ran a 5K on trails and made the (scary) drive back home with blurred vision.
On August 31 I was staring at my computer screen but not having much success in reading anything before me. So I called my eye doctor’s office here in Vegas and pleaded for help. They agreed to fit me in that day, so I managed to drive myself (yes, I have been a pretty big hazard on the roads lately) to the office.
The doctor I saw wasn’t my normal doc, just another one in the office that was available to see me on such short notice. He said that the surface of my eye looked roughed up, with some excessive dry patches. I mentioned that I’d had some troubles with a plug before and he brushed that off. He prescribed a different eye drop (Zylet) and another 7 days without my contacts.
This time I was religious with the no-contact lens rule. I even managed to run several times, including a long run, in my glasses… which was pretty uncomfortable for me. But the thing is… my eye didn’t feel any better at all this whole time.
Fortunately, I had another appointment already scheduled with my eye doc for this week, as a follow-up from the weird plug/makeup brush incident. So yesterday I saw my ophthalmologist.
First I saw one of the assistants in the office. She had me cover my left eye with that little paddle with an eye hole and asked me to read the letters projected in front of me and I couldn’t make out a single letter. Not one… no matter how large they went. Then they covered the open eye hole with a piece of plastic covered in small pin holes. And suddenly, I could read the large letters. So apparently I need to cover my head in solid plastic with tiny pin holes to be able to see. But only big things, moving back down to smaller letters and I was hopeless once again.
After this, she filled my eyes with a numbing drop, checked the pressure and said the doctor would be in soon.
He walked in, saw me and said, “Oh yes, I remember you. The weird punctal plug incident.” I guess I made an impression…
Anyway, he asked me how my eye was feeling and I said the left eye was great, but my right eye was a mess. He immediately said, “Well, let’s check out that plug. Maybe there’s some weirdness going on there.”
He took a look and said, “It looks like the plug is crooked. Your body seems to not like these things anymore. What do you say we just pull it out?”
YES! That’s what I was going to ask for anyway…
He came at me with tweezers… that’s disconcerting. He plucked out the plug and then proceeded to look at my eyes some more. He said, “Well, you have a good reason for blurred vision. Your cornea is certainly scratched up good. Probably from the plug being partially dislodged, it was scratching you all the time. The strange thing is… there’s a good chance that wearing the contacts might have helped protect your eye somewhat. Can’t know that for certain, but it seems logical to me.”
But he told me to go without my contacts for a few days longer now, to try letting the scratches heal. He said, “We’ll know within a couple days if this is fixing the problem. But I really think this will help and your vision will start getting better. If it doesn’t seem improved by the end of the week, let’s get you back in here next week. In any case, let’s have you come back in three weeks for another check.”
My vision definitely felt like it was clearing up a lot throughout the day yesterday, but I went running in the evening and managed to get a good dose of sweat in my eye and then the blurring was back in full force. I’m sure that didn’t help the healing.
But I’m desperately hoping this all goes away soon and that I won’t have to see the eye doctor again for a long time after my appointment in a few weeks.
