Very sore eye

On our way home from London I suddenly developed a severe pain in my eye. I assumed that a bit of grit or even an eyelash had fallen into it. Despite flushing out my eye constantly with sterile solution that James kindly obtained for me in Boots at Heathrow Airport, the pain continued. It really felt like I was being stabbed in my eye! I phoned Carol, our optician, but although she was willing to see me, she mentioned that she was about to go away for the weekend, so I foolishly insisted on NOT going to see her, assuming that my eye would surely improve. But no. There ensued two days of pain, during which I couldn’t find anything stuck under my eyelid or anything else that could explain the pain. My eyeball was bright red and my eyelids were swollen. I would have cried but tears were already streaming from my eye! And it felt even worse in bright light. Nevertheless I soldiered on with pre-planned social arrangements, such as meeting up for coffee with Suzy, Harris and Gran Jan, and having lunch with Christine and Gerry, and having dinner with Jennifer, Caroline and Linda. My eye screamed at me throughout, but I put on a brave face and tried not to grimace too much! 

Finally on Friday James insisted on taking me to Specsavers in Rutherglen as an emergency and after a bit of waiting around I was examined by a very serious young optometrist. She soon found out what was wrong. I have a 3 - 4 mm ulcer on my cornea, quite deep into the stroma layer, caused by tiny ingrowing eyelashes. My goodness I didn’t expect that. At worst I thought that I maybe had a wee scratch on my eye. The next thing the optometrist was on the phone to the hospital to check which antibiotic cream to give me. And the rest is good news - my eye feels a bit tender but that is NOTHING compared to the previous pain. We went out for a lovely Rasoi curry that evening with Heather and Ewan and I was giddy with relief. The optometrist wants to monitor the ulcer over the next few days but it’s definitely on the mend.