The red-eye

Twittered (tweeted?) earlier about the red-eye flight into Memphis and my bloodshot eyes. It was a little more serious than that.

I've actually had slightly bloodshot eyes for the past couple of weeks -- nothing horrible, just enough to be unsightly. (Unsightly -- get it?) Didn't itch, didn't hurt ... so I chalked it up to all the dust we'd stirred up while packing combined with a stress and a strange sleep schedule.

Paul convinced me to go to the optometrist today -- one of our three days in Memphis -- just to have it checked out.

The diagnosis? Filamentary keratitis. Basically, my eyes are extremely, extremely dry, and epithelial cells have broken off into strands that more or less are hanging from my cornea. The optometrist numbed my eye and pulled off three of the strands. Grossed out yet?

Now I've got to put this oily antibiotic in my eyes every few hours to keep them from getting infected or ulcerated. I can't wear my contacts for a few weeks, and also (more annoyingly) I have to put eye drops in every 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes! My watch timer is set on a 20-minute repeat (slightly more tolerable than 15 minutes). I put drops in at least three times during dinner and five times at Starbucks tonight. People probably think I'm crazy.

And my eyes still look unsightly.

Back to the optometrist tomorrow to make sure I'm making progress.

So here's a public thanks to Paul. I was pretty mean about him nagging me, but he kept right on doing it, and I'm glad he did.

Another late-night post. Ignore typos until I'm able to proof in the a.m. :)