Eyeball Mining

All afternoon yesterday, my right eye was bothering me. Not sure what was caught in it but by midnight it was driving me crazy. Even when it was closed - it throbbed. Needless to say, I didn't sleep very well last night.

When I got up this morning, it didn't feel quite as bad but my eyelid was swollen and the ol' ball was very sensitive to light. First order of business was to find an optometrist - I take my eyesight very seriously. Both offices in Alpine were closed today (of course). I struck gold with an office in Ft. Stockton that could take me at 3:30. Left the Field Lab at 12:30 and made the 2 1/2 hour trip north. Arrived at the office a little early so I had a chance to catch up on 2 issues of People Magazine - it made my eye throb more.

Got ushered into a room by an "eye tech" and she took down all my info, tested my vision, did a glaucoma test, and took photos inside my eyes through the pupils and shot microscopic cellular level photos of my eyes (I have good cells).

Shifted to another room and Dr.Urias came in to give me the once over. I showed him the photo I took of my eyeball with the little offending brown spot left of my pupil. Stuck my face into his eyeball microscope and he took a close look. Then he gave me some numbing eye drops. He then folded back my eyelid and swabbed the eye and the lid with an official Qtip. The real fun started when he actually dug out a hunk of something using the tip of a tini hypodermic needle. Photo shot from his computer screen of the magnified needle with the little blob of stuff he removed. Didn't even feel any pressure much less any pain. Next up was Dr. Pass to do the final pass. Another drop of numbing fluid and he actually took a little Dremmel tool like thing and extracted the final offending bits. Again - no pressure, no pain. The beauty is that my new health insurance just kicked in after the mandatory one year wait for a pre-existing condition so 2 hours of professional eyeball mining only cost me $30. Hopefully all is well now but have to wait a couple of days to be sure - with antibiotic eye drops to pop in there every 4 hours. Aches a little tonight but its a healing pain as opposed to a damaging pain......I think.

Stopped my the hardware store on the way home and bought a new pair of safety goggles.