For the past six weeks or so my eyes have been extraordinarily red. I’ve always struggled with red eyes due to allergies and other sensitivities, however, this was really bad. It was so bad that at an executive council meeting Wednesday several of my peers queried what was wrong with my eyes. Immediately after the meeting I decided to do something about it and scheduled an optometrist appointment for later that day.

The optometrist explained that I had mild allergies, but also a mild infection called blepharitis. Apparently because I’ve been under so much stress lately (and by lately I mean all year long) my oil glands in my eyelids stopped working and infection set in. The infection boiled out and flaked off into my eyes, which is why I always felt like I had something (like a piece of sand) in my eye. The material is full of acid, so in addition to irritating the eye just by being there it burned the eye. So, now I’m putting a dab of medicine in each eyelid twice a day and also putting in Patanol (yes, mom, I remember) drops twice a day.

Two days and $150 later (turns out my insurance covers sight exams, not eye-health exams and medication) my eyes are still red. The treatment is recommended for ten days so I’m holding out hope it just isn’t working yet. The doctor did say the results wouldn’t be immediate. He also said that because this is caused (normally) by stress that he sees it in college students a lot. Which reminded me – I went to the student health services building two or three times when I was in college for eye infections. (see this blog entry from long ago for proof of that) All the exams were short and quick and never returned a diagnosis of blepharitis. Of course, they were also performed by students and not doctors with twenty years of experience. I wonder if I’ve had this condition for ten years and just thought it was allergies the whole time.