The difference a day makes
Jul. 24th, 2016 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tigerfortThe difference a day and a huge quantity of prescription medicines make, to be more specific. (Where "huge quantity" amounts to probably less than 1/10 gram of actual drugs, but that's in quite a lot of doses of several different things.)
Relatedly, I seem to still be sucking at the more-frequent-posting thing, don't I?
What's happened since last I posted? Well, I'm not actually sure about the first week of July, sorry. But after that, we went to visit my mother for a week or so, and then the day after we got back I noticed my left eye had become rather bloodshot. Cue lots of Optrex, handwashing and being really careful not to touch my eyes for a few days, followed by ringing my GP. Given my symptoms, I pretty obviously had a corneal infection, so she prescribed the usual ointment-stuff without making me trek up to the surgery. (In retrospect, this normally mutually beneficial time-and-effort-saving may have been a mistake on this occasion, although it might not have made any difference.) Over the next couple of days, my eye seemed to be improving in the expected fashion.
Then on Saturday morning I woke up with a stabbing pain inside the eyeball, and violent photosensitivity on that side. Down to A&E I went, with some folded cloth tucked in behind the left side of my glasses to keep the light level down. After a certain amount of waiting (because Saturday lunchtime is not the ideal moment to go to A&E, especially in a tourist area), I saw one of the nurse practitioners, who did the usual eye-examining stuff, identified the problem, and sent me up to the specialist with a note. The first thing the opthalmologist did was put a drop of local anaesthetic into that eye, which... when I got home I tweeted observing that being given anaesthetic always gives me a deep and sincere understanding for people who get addicted to analgesics. All of a sudden, it doesn't hurt, even if only temporarily (and in this case, very locally).
Anyway, I might have a residual infection in the cornea, but what I definitely do have is infection and inflamation in one side of the iris. Which has two main effects: the lens is being squeezed out of place (hence the stabbing pain), and my pupil is currently rather obviously non-circular. I'm trying to get a good picture of the latter, but my attempts so far all have either too many reflections or too much movement. (Getting the camera to stay perfectly still for a long exposure in low light is pretty easy; keeping my eye completely stationary for a second or so is... harder :)
Anyway, the nice doctor gave me prescriptions for a couple of things to kill the infection (which is going to take six weeks, apparently) and about ten days supply of muscle-relaxant eyedrops that keep the iris in that eye totally limp. Which makes sure my eye doesn't suffer any permanent harm, but also means that I can't focus with it (or control the amount of light coming in). But 100 years ago I'd probably have suffered a serious (possibly total) loss of vision in that eye, so I'll happily take a few weeks inconvenience. Isn't science wonderful?
Other than that, I have mostly spent the last week or so listening to audiobooks, for some reason. If anyone would like to recommend cheerful soothing podcasts that I can download as MP3s without having to f*ck around with iThings, I'd be very grateful.
Relatedly, I seem to still be sucking at the more-frequent-posting thing, don't I?
What's happened since last I posted? Well, I'm not actually sure about the first week of July, sorry. But after that, we went to visit my mother for a week or so, and then the day after we got back I noticed my left eye had become rather bloodshot. Cue lots of Optrex, handwashing and being really careful not to touch my eyes for a few days, followed by ringing my GP. Given my symptoms, I pretty obviously had a corneal infection, so she prescribed the usual ointment-stuff without making me trek up to the surgery. (In retrospect, this normally mutually beneficial time-and-effort-saving may have been a mistake on this occasion, although it might not have made any difference.) Over the next couple of days, my eye seemed to be improving in the expected fashion.
Then on Saturday morning I woke up with a stabbing pain inside the eyeball, and violent photosensitivity on that side. Down to A&E I went, with some folded cloth tucked in behind the left side of my glasses to keep the light level down. After a certain amount of waiting (because Saturday lunchtime is not the ideal moment to go to A&E, especially in a tourist area), I saw one of the nurse practitioners, who did the usual eye-examining stuff, identified the problem, and sent me up to the specialist with a note. The first thing the opthalmologist did was put a drop of local anaesthetic into that eye, which... when I got home I tweeted observing that being given anaesthetic always gives me a deep and sincere understanding for people who get addicted to analgesics. All of a sudden, it doesn't hurt, even if only temporarily (and in this case, very locally).
Anyway, I might have a residual infection in the cornea, but what I definitely do have is infection and inflamation in one side of the iris. Which has two main effects: the lens is being squeezed out of place (hence the stabbing pain), and my pupil is currently rather obviously non-circular. I'm trying to get a good picture of the latter, but my attempts so far all have either too many reflections or too much movement. (Getting the camera to stay perfectly still for a long exposure in low light is pretty easy; keeping my eye completely stationary for a second or so is... harder :)
Anyway, the nice doctor gave me prescriptions for a couple of things to kill the infection (which is going to take six weeks, apparently) and about ten days supply of muscle-relaxant eyedrops that keep the iris in that eye totally limp. Which makes sure my eye doesn't suffer any permanent harm, but also means that I can't focus with it (or control the amount of light coming in). But 100 years ago I'd probably have suffered a serious (possibly total) loss of vision in that eye, so I'll happily take a few weeks inconvenience. Isn't science wonderful?
Other than that, I have mostly spent the last week or so listening to audiobooks, for some reason. If anyone would like to recommend cheerful soothing podcasts that I can download as MP3s without having to f*ck around with iThings, I'd be very grateful.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-25 02:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-25 10:26 am (UTC)There's a lot of good stuff on BBC Radio 7, though you'd have to stream it.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-27 03:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-27 03:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-25 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-25 04:06 pm (UTC)I really like _Welcome to Night Vale_ which is a radio programme set in a little American town where all the conspiracy theories are true and lots of weird things happen: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/listen
(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-27 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-07-25 09:49 pm (UTC)Eep, that sounds really quite scary. I hope the wonder drugs do their wonders as quickly as possible!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-08-04 07:30 pm (UTC)