Don't It Make My Green Eyes Red?

Last week, right after my family returned from our yearly cabin retreat, both of our kids took ill with fevers.  It was a very strange bout of illness for the kids, as their body temperatures fluctuated up and down several times a day for five days.  We'd check their temp and it would be at 98.6.  Check it again, three hours later, and it would be 103.  Three hours later, back to normal.  That's the way it went for several days.  We even brought the kids into the doctor.  Their diagnosis: it's a virus.  Medicate with Tylenol and ride it out.  So that's what we did.

Cut to Wednesday of this week: my left eye began to water at some point in time during the day, I don't quite remember exactly when.  I didn't think too much of it, as sometimes my eyes water for whatever reason.  I'm a long-time contact lens wearer, so I'm used to some minor eye irritation from time to time.  But it got more strange as the day went on, in that the watering didn't stop.  In fact, about every two minutes I had to wipe a tear from my eye.  I still didn't think too much about it.

Thursday morning I woke up, and my eye was still tearing up like crazy.  And there was a new symptom: tenderness and redness.  My eye was turning a little red, and when I touched the top or bottom eyelid, there was just the slightest throb.  I still didn't think too much about it, and went about my busy day of Backyard Bible Club leading and planning, in addition to my regular work (it was a long day that started at about 9 AM and ended about 9 PM).  By the end of the day, it seemed like the tearing had ratcheted up a notch.  It was getting to be quite a pain in the butt.  My vision kept blurring from the tears, and I constantly had to wipe away the tears from my eye.

By the time I woke up on Friday morning (this morning) things had deteriorated significantly.  My eye went from being slightly red to mostly red, and there was more pain, both to the touch and if I scrunched my eye shut.  The tearing was still going strong, and by this time my eyeball had swollen up, and it was as though I could feel it bulging out of my face.  This caused my eyelid to not be able to open up as far as my right eyelid, giving me a bit of a weird look (in more ways than one), as you can see in the picture.

I decided that it was finally time to be seen by a professional, but being that it was the last day of Backyard Bible club, and that it was our closing day with a lot of extra stuff planned, I did not want to have to miss anything in order to go to the doctor.  The local eye clinic had no openings during the day, however, except at 10:40, which was right during the heart of the ByBC meeting.  I turned it down.  I then called four other clinics looking for the latest possible appointment time I could find.  The best I could do was 11:10 at the Bandana Square clinic.  Less than ideal, but it was the best I could do.  I certainly didn't want to live with this thing all weekend.

The eye doctor determined it was an infection.  After I told him that my kids were just sick with a virus last week, he determined that I had the same virus.  When I protested by telling him that my kids only had fevers and not eye problems (Jamie had a red eye for about a day - nothing nearly as bad as what I've got), he told me it didn't matter - the same virus attacked my eye.  He prescribed some drops, which I've used several times this evening.  As I type, my eye is very sticky, still swollen, and still tearing.  I guess the medicine hasn't totally kicked in yet.

This whole experience, along with several others throughout this week of ByBC has got me thinking about what God is either doing, or allowing to happen, in regards to some particular details of ByBC (more on that some other time).  In other words, there's something spiritual going on in all this.  Now to think about what that is.  I'm just glad the condition with my eye is contained and is treatable.  Thanks be to God for that, and that'll do for now.