Thank you for all your prayers and good wishes – please keep them up 🙂

Here are the most important updates:

– My eye is responding well to all the eye drops (4 different sorts last count)

– I am going to be released in the morning, assuming the head doctor says things are ok.

– I have to promise to come back for a check-up on Friday, and can go on holiday as long as I go to see an eye-doctor while I’m there. (:))

– I am allowed to sleep through the night (WHOO!!!)

Sleep well people!

*****

(And now for the rambling back-story I promised yesterday but didn’t finish earlier…)

Monday.
The first day of the busy week. DB and I slept in until half past 10 in the morning, which is a little bit later than I’d planned, but next to unheard of for him… I lazed about on the sofa until I finished my jigsaw and only half-heartedly started sorting out the first couple of boxes in my corner before a friend of DB’s came over. We all chatted for an hour or two and before I knew it, it was dinner-time, followed by walk-round-the-housing-estate-time, followed by crash-out-on-the-sofa-time.

My eye itched for most of the day, and I mostly ignored it. It was a bit dry and a bit red, so I dropped eye drops in every so often, but I get itchy, dry eyes fairly regularly anyway, so I didn’t really think too much about it until we were out walking and the street lights made my eyes hurt. I thought I must have got dust in them while cleaning.

When I peeled myself off the sofa, I took my contact lenses out, washed them carefully and went to bed reasonably early.

1 day down, 4 to go.

***

Monday night.
On an average night, I wake up at least once to go for a pee. On Monday, I was up several times, to put more eye drops in. My eyes (especially the right one) felt gritty. They wavered between feeling too dry, and feeling like I was crying.

Between loo-trips and eye-drop-trips and tossing-and-turning and fighting with the duvet, I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

***

Tuesday.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, I discovered that I couldn’t open my eyes. Or rather, I could, but it hurt. A lot. A very lot as we used to say in my family :).

The light hurt, the movement involved in opening them hurt, the movement involved in looking anywhere but straight ahead hurt. Everything hurt.

We live on a road with streetlights, so even when the curtains are closed, a little bit of light comes in. That was enough to make me hide back under the duvet and scrunch my eyes closed.

At some point DB’s dad phoned and DB got up to help him. I stayed in bed. There was no way I could go anywhere or do anything useful. Looking at things is pretty impossible through closed eyes.

I slept for a while instead.

When I woke up, opening my right eye was still excruciating. Opening my left eye was ok, as long as I didn’t move it or look at anything remotely light. (Not because my left eye hurt, but because they’re synchronised and when left moves, right moves too. When left pupil dilates or closes, right does too). Even with my eyes shut I wasn’t totally pain-free. Just moving my eyes was like prodding a bruise or putting pressure on a sprained ankle.

I went back to sleep. Or at least tried to.

In the time it took DB and his dad to remove and replace the exhaust pipe on the van, I managed to sleep a bit more. I also managed to fumble my way to the cake tin in the kitchen. 😉 Opening my eyes without wincing (too much), came later. Something like 20 mostly-blind eye-drop trips later.

I was able to fully open the curtains at about half past 3, as the sun was starting to go down and I’d had a bath in the near-dark.

***

I’d originally asked DB to take me to see an eye-doctor when he got back.

When he got home, my eye was still bloodshot, but it didn’t hurt neatly as much and I was able to read (and write) one-eyed (hence the quote posts), and felt things were much improved. I wavered against going anywhere. We settled for going to a chemists and asking for more eye drops and a second opinion.

The chemist-lady said she had eye drops, but the good ones were all prescription-only. She said it looked pretty bad (totally bloodshot and a little bit puffy), and recommended going to the specialist eye-clinic.

***

4 and a half hours and a lot of bright lights later, we left the clinic and drove home with enough time to eat quickly, and to pack an overnight bag for an indefinite hospital stay.

It’s amazing how rationally I think when I should be panicking, and how much I panic when there’s no reason for it.

This was rational packing. My bag was packed with far less hassle than when I go on holiday. I thought about my wash kit, dug out a string of fairy lights from a box in the furthest corner of the bedroom (if I’m going to be stuck in hospital, then I want it to be pretty), counted socks and underwear and chose a variety of different books to read. I packed a phone charger, and earphones, and an MP3 player. DB cooked, then packed the tablet and some chocolate for me :).

Just over an hour later, at exactly 10pm, we were met by the porter (/whatever the men who escort you to the right ward are called).

The night nurse was amazing, the morning nurse not so much.

Considering they were both responsible for squirting drops in my eyes every hour or so through the night, they couldn’t have done it more differently. It seems some people are more suited to the job than others. In the middle of the night I want to sleep. I don’t want to be woken up more than necessary. Given the choice, I will always favour someone who appears by the bed silently, gently lays a hand on my shoulder until I roll over and open my eye and gets the drops in and mopped up and is out of the room before I have time to become properly conscious, over someone who feels the need to open the door loudly, trample across the room and boom in a ultra-chirpy manner that it’s ‘time for more eye drops!’. Also, if the fairy lights I’m sleeping under provide enough light to see by, why turn all the ward lights on?!

Rant over.

***

Without lenses I turn into a mole. I can see things but they don’t have defined edges. The world looks more like a Monet painting than a Litchenstein cartoon. I can read ok, but I can’t see your features if you stand across the room from me.

I haven’t worn glasses in years. I don’t even own a current pair of glasses – contact lenses are so much more practical, and since my eyes kept changing strength (or weakness in my case), I decided to wait until they’d settled down before ordering glasses.
They’ve been stable for a year now, so buying a pair of glasses was on the list of Things-to-do-in-2016.

Ho-hum.

I’m not allowed to wear contact lenses for the best part of a month. That’s a lot of time to be blind.

It’s New Year’s Eve tomorrow. Everything shuts at midday. Nothing opens at all on New Years Day, and we fly to Lanzarote early on the 2nd (Saturday). Then it’s Sunday and nothing will be open there either. There’s a slight chance something might open on the Monday, but there’s a lot of chance it won’t, because the Spanish celebrate Christmas up to the 6th of January. I hope I can get someone to make me a pair of glasses after that at the very latest. That’s more than a week of mole-dom.

ARGH.