Friday, May 30, 2008

The mange

Last night, I was in bed, all exhausted, ready to go to sleep and my eye, which has been giving me trouble, started hurting and itching like crazy. Really really hurting. I lay in bed for about two hours, trying not to touch it until I couldn't stand it any more. I went and got a warm compress and sat there for another two hours trying to get the pain and itching down. Still nothing.

At this point, it is around 4 am and I decided it might be good to get a change of scenery, I went out and put the television on, ended up watching The Last King of Scotland until 6.30 in the morning. My eye was still killing me, but I was so exhausted I fell in to a fitful sleep from 6.30 until 8.00.

However, when I woke up at 8.00 in the morning I had somehow, in those two hours, turned in to some sort of a character in a horror story. My eye was swollen to the size of a ping pong ball and, obviously, swollen shut, leaking some sort of pus-like substance out of the side and it felt like someone was stabbing me with a pencil in the tear duct every few seconds.

I walked out in to the office where everyone went "YICK" and started inching away from me. Obviously, then this was a case for the clinic. I walked down to a place near us run by some Lebanese, I think, and the nurse, comfortingly, said "Ewwwww, that's gross" instead of hello.

Apparently I have some sort of an infection and am now on an interesting cocktail of drugs and drops. The swelling has gone down to the point that I can now open the eye but believe me, I am even less likely to win a beauty contest now than usual. I got through all the customs searches at the airport like a breeze, though, I don't think any of the inspectors wanted to touch me.

1 comment:

pragzz said...

Sounds like Conjunctivitis. I've had it before and the symptoms are similar. Go see a doc if you can; don't rub your eyes even if you feel like it, and get lots of rest. Most importantly, keep the "gross fluid leaking out" (puss) away from others. conjunctivitis spreads through contact with the infected fluid. It usually goes away in 5-14 days (depending on how bad the infection is). If the itching is bad, just make a compress with lukewarm water (and cucumber...in India, they also use turmeric in the compress) and place on your eyes. Good luck!