The last few posts of my blog have sounded like pages from a big grievance log you’d find in the property of some bitter geriatric patient in a hospice, so I figured I wouldn’t post an update on my eye issue. I was surprised to see comments on the last post with actual concern for my health, so now I decided to talk about my condition again. If you don’t want to read about that, you don’t have to; it’s a free blog.

Yesterday, I went into my primary care physician’s office again (can’t see an opthalmologist unless he writes me a referral), and they checked my vision (fine) and my cornea (fine). By the way, they check the cornea by dropping in a flourescent dye and then looking for differently-colored areas in the eye with a special blacklight. If I ever had doubt that my eyes were connected to my sinuses, I don’t anymore, as my right nostril was leaking bright yellow highlighter fluid for the next half hour. The doctor prescribed an eyedrop called “Sulfacetamide Sodium” to instill 4 times a day in the affected eye. He said it was either a bacterial or a viral infection in the eye, more likely bacterial, and probably secondary to the sinus/upper respiratory infection I have going on which was secondary to the original flu bug.

I put the drops in the right eye, and then by yesterday evening, the same beginning stages of the infection started occurring in my left eye. Great. I have no immune system. I totally thought the crazy fever I endured last Thursday night would’ve made me completely sterile, but apparently, it just somehow attracted more bacteria do to the monster mash in my body. I asked myself in passing, “Why am I so immuno-compromised?” and it briefly occurred to me that maybe I have HIV or something. But no way, I had a full physical with all standard STD testing when I had my pap smear a few months ago and they would’ve told me something like THAT.

So I was looking forward to feeling better for Thanksgiving, taking my oral antibiotics, dropping the stinging eye crap in both eyes, listening to my doctor’s advice to not wear contacts or eye makeup for week or so. I look and sound and feel like shit, but it’s temporary, right?

And then my ex, the optometrist, called. Basically, he said, the eye drops are some weak antiquated antibiotic that isn’t going to work. The bacterial resistence to it is very high and if I don’t nip this eye thing, it’ll spread to my other eye (which it has) and then the bacteria, which has already claimed my lungs and sinuses and eyes, will next claim my inner ears in an inner ear infection. My inner ears HAVE been itching and sometimes a hard cough makes it feel like I’m scratching them. I wanted to cry right there which, as the ex explained, is all that the eyedrops I have in hand do anyway — sting you and make you cry so that your tears flush out the bad stuff. So now he’s going to fax over a prescription for an eyedrop called Zymar and instructed me to take it to my regular health care’s walk-in hours and ask them to rewrite the prescription on their end so that my insurance would cover it.

*hacking coughing fit*