Cornea Abrasions

Oh the pain!

So Wednesday night when I took my contact out I had a sharp pain in my eye. I couldn’t see for a bit and then I had a lot of pain. I thought my contact must have been dry. I didn’t think it was anything serious. My eye hurt the rest of the night but I fell asleep just fine. I woke up this morning with watery eyes that hurt. My first thought was pink eye…crap! No contacts for a week, annoying drops. 

ARGH!

So when I got to work I headed over the Target Clinic. I told her my symptoms and she sent me over to optical. Nope, not pink eye. Optical set me up with an appointment and oh sorry we don’t accept Medica until November 1st (it is October 29th). She sent me Visionworks in the skyway. I told the optical person there my symptoms and she said it sounds like you scratched your cornea. You have to see an ophthalmologist.  Oh crap, where am I going to get an ophthalmologist in Downtown Minneapolis? By this point I was in a lot of pain and needed something. Thankfully there is Eye Care Associates on the 20th floor of the Medical Arts Building. (The building is one of the oldest in downtown, built in 1923 and at 20 floors it was quite the building back then. It used to be a medical hub but I thought it was converted into offices. I guess I was wrong. The décor is very much 1920s haha!)

I called and got an appointment at 10am. Amazing! The offices were very strange. They had fireplaces in them. How cool?! The nurse or whatever she was took me back and put some numbing drops in my eye…that was fantastic! She asked a bunch of questions but she was Russian or Eastern European so it was hard to understand her but I think we figured each other out. She pushed some instrument into my eye. I’m a contact wearer and I had issues with this, I couldn’t imagine somebody going through this that isn’t used to putting things in their eye! My pressure is good…so no glaucoma for me. Yay!

I got ushered into the doctor’s office. The doctor is a young buck. He seemed to have a lack of words. He would stutter a lot before saying what he was going to say. It didn’t really give me confidence but I think that is just his style. He of course shined a very bright light into my eye which wasn’t to pleasant since my eye is sensitive to light right now. He hummed and hawed and finally told me the problem. I didn’t just scratch my cornea, it has multiple abrasions. Bad news! Good news is I don’t have an eye ulcer…that sounds terrible.

I wish I had pink eye!

NO CONTACTS FOR 2 WEEKS! Also I have to put this antibiotic/steroid ointment (it is like a cream) on my eye four times a day. That stuff is weird. I have to be reevaluated in two weeks. I got permission to wear NEW contacts for my 15K next weekend in Chicago but was given strict instructions to take them out immediately afterwards and discard them. I can’t imagine running almost 10 miles in my glasses. I did 3 tonight and it was ok but I had chafing on my nose from the nose pads. I bought some Band-Aids and see if that will reduce the pain on my nose. Other than that it was fine.

Causes…

Well the problem could have come from a dirty contact lens (which I doubt because I’m very good about washing my hands before and cleaning the lens before I put it in) or more likely a buildup of calcium on my lens which can’t be rubbed off. They told me I had to use this new (of course more expensive) way for lens cleaning which should stop the buildup of calcium. I’m willing to do it because I don’t want to go blind.

What’s next?

Well I get to wear my wonderful glasses for 2 weeks straight. This should be interesting because glasses drive me crazy. I could get PRK Laser Eye Surgery which is not as easy as Lasik but I can’t do Lasik. The surgery would scrap my eye (doesn’t that sound awesome!) and I couldn’t be able to see for a few days but after 3-6 months I would have 20/20 vision. Also with PRK there is no “flap” to deal with so no complications afterwards. It is expensive so I have to think about it. The end result sounds awesome. I just don’t know if I want to do the painful part.