castles made of sand…

A few weeks ago, I went back to the eye surgeon for my six month checkup. Having known that my boyfriend had a bacterial eye infection for the last few months, I suppose I shouldn’t have been suprised to find that my absurdly dry and crusty eye condition was the result of contracting the same infection, blepharitis. But I did feel a bit unprepared for this news, since I had given up my insurance and prescription benefits when I quit my job and headed south. So I was also feeling some other emotions that day: angry, frustrated, annoyed, upset, teary — although the last condition actually offered a bit of relief against my scratchy eyeballs. I’ve been on the (very expensive) antibiotics for over two weeks now, and I am almost to the point where I can open my eyes without pain in the morning. However, I can’t read at night when I’m in bed, due to the thickness of the antibiotic goop, as well as the fact that my pupil focusing muscles still get strained after a half-hour in front of a book. I do think that if I had been told 6 months ago that I would have trouble reading books and/or opening my eyes in the morning, I wouldn’t have been quite so anxious to get rid of my contacts. It would be nice to be able to go more than 30 minutes without thinking about how dry my eyes are, or how I wish things were just a little bit more in focus.

The other result of the checkup visit (aside from weaseling my way out of an $85 bill), was the good news that my vision is supposedly 20/20. But its not as good as my vision used to be with contacts, and I do miss that clarity… Also, the surgeon prescibed me about 7 ml more of the antibiotic drops than I really needed, and luckily the pharmacy only had the smaller bottle in stock, so I didn’t end up buying even more drugs that I wouldn’t finish using. But it did support my position that the surgeon I went to was heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry…