ow, Ow, OW!

This started yesterday morning and got worse and worse until this morning I went to the new walk-up clinic at Walgreen's.

I woke up Saturday with severe redness in my right eye. Didn't bother with my lenses but didn't think much of it. Went out in the summer sun and ... OH MY GAWD! I couldn't see. Shit, I couldn't even open my eye -- that's how light sensitive it had become. My glasses are photogray but hadn't gone completely dark yet. So I stood in the shade (and there was precious little of it yesterday -- damn this good weekend weather!) and waited for my glasses to do their magic. Can't tell you what an embarrassing drag that was.

Then I brilliantly made it all the worse by using Clear Eyez. The bottle said it would reduce redness. What the bastards DIDN'T say was that it was going to really hurt and make my eye lid swell. What's more, this little $3.59 OTC bottle of eye drops increased my light sensitivity from acute to ridiculous. It was so bad that watching Live Free or Die Hard was actually painful. Yes, the bright explosions in the otherwise dark theater were too much for my poor eyes to take.

By this morning I was miserable. It's Sunday. It's the beginning of the a holiday week. I don't have an eye doctor (just an optometrist). What's a gal to do?

So at 10:00 I headed over to the Walgreen's Health Corner Clinic. My eyes hurt so much in the morning sun that I walked much of the way with my head down. The nurse practioner took me immediately. She was very friendly, very thorough, tested my cornea for scratches or injury and, finding none, prescribed me some antibiotics. Even better, she gave me a referral to an opthamologist and assured me that if my eye doesn't improve they will see me, holiday or no.

Wish me, and my poor bacterially-infected right eye, luck.