Eye Troubles

The three of us younger Quiring siblings have temperamental eyes. Our eyes will cooperate for months and months and then, just when we think that they won't give us any more problems, eye issues pop up out of nowhere. Bryn's eyes have been hurting her for a couple of weeks. She thought that it was because she needed some new contacts, which she got last week, but her eyes still mysteriously bother her at times. Last week Ty's eyes also started hurting and when he went to pick up his new glasses, he was sent to the ophthalmologist to get his eyes checked out more thoroughly. It turned out that he had an eye infection and was given prescription eye-drops to clear up the infection and Eye-Stil drops to keep his eyes from getting too dry.

On Saturday afternoon, when my parents and I got home from potluck, I curled up to read a book, but ended up accidentally falling asleep for three hours. I woke up when Bryn and Ty got home from their quick grad trip to UCA. My eyes really hurt, so I took out my contacts right away and my eyes started to feel better. All was fine until I woke up at 5:30 a.m. Sunday to say good-bye to my dad and Tyler who were leaving to catch their flight to Montreal for a week long 20-20 training session. I found it impossible to fall back asleep because my eyes were extremely light sensitive and even with my blinds down, the five windows in my room were letting in enormous amounts of light. I ended up stumbling to the other side of the house where I crashed in Ty's one-window room for a few more hours. When I finally woke up from my fitful sleep, I showed my mum my eyes and soon after, holding a dark, wet washcloth over my eyes for protection from the bright outdoors, we headed to the walk-in clinic. After sitting beside a cranky mum with a sick baby and an energetic three-year-old for at least half an hour in a waiting room filled with open windows, my name was called and I went to see the Dr. He was an idiot and did absolutely nothing for my eyes...he even insisted on keeping every light on in the examining room. I was beyond annoyed. The Dr. told me that my eye pain was either from my contacts or was an infection that I might have caught from my brother. I had already gathered that much. I asked if I should see my optometrist or my ophthalmologist on Monday, but he said that that wasn't necessary and just told me to make sure my vision didn't change during the next 72 hours and to come in right away if it did or if there was any discharge from my eyes. When I got home I took a T1 and thanked my lucky stars that I was back in Canada, a land where T1's can legally be bought straight off the shelf, without a prescription. After that, my eyes started to feel better and I spent the rest of the afternoon curled up on a chair with a dark blanket over my head, listening to shows on TV. By night I could stand to actually look at the TV screen again and Bryn and I watched the CBC late night movie, "Happy Gilmore." I went to bed confident that my eyes were healing and would feel much better the next morning. If only...

This morning when turned off my alarm and opened my eyes, I was happy to find that they felt much better. I got up and went to shower. That's when I found out that my eyes weren't 100% better yet. They hurt almost as much as Sunday morning. I dreaded going to work and having to stare at a computer screen all day, but I went anyway and managed the pain by shutting all the lights off and closing all the window blinds in my office. Bryn and I even worked out a system where I would tell her what to input into the database and then she would do the computer work. We got pretty fast at updating FoxPro using our system. At lunch my mum took me to the optometrist appointment I had made as soon as I got to work and from there I was sent to my ophthalmologist. It's always an interesting experience going to my ophthalmologist because he mostly does cataract surgeries for people quite a bit older than myself. I was the youngest person in the whole office and all his other patients waiting with me were over 70. It's definitely a very different situation, but I did hear some interesting gossip while I was waiting! It turns out that my eyes have a mild form of keratitis due to lack of oxygen to my eyes which, of course, was a result of falling asleep with my contacts in. So basically I'm using a lot of Eye-Stil and GenTeal drops to keep my eyes from getting too dry and I can't wear my contacts for a few more days...oh and I for sure can't fall asleep wearing my contacts again. I'm really glad it didn't turn out to be an infection or anything even worse! Hopefully my eyes will clear up in time for Friday when we fly out to Winnipeg and start our eastern Canada tour.