My eyes are still healing up. The one that got scratched is getting much better. I can read with it now, just a bit of double vision left. The Dr said I might have to get a new prescription lens for that side, but it’s looking like it could be back to normal when it’s done healing up. The one that didn’t get scratched, but sent me to urgent care two weeks ago with sudden inexplicable pain, is all better. The doctor could not find anything wrong with it, and thought it might have been some sort of ‘sympathy pain’ – he said that happens sometimes. So that eye is not taking any medicine, but the eye doctor put the scratched eye on the steroid drops for the next two weeks. The steroid drops sting. Other than the steroid drops, I am using Thera Tears (replacement tears) in both eyes regularly.

Friday and Saturday night I woke up with stabbing pain in my scratched eye, a couple times on Saturday night, and the doctor thought this was related to dry eyes, or my sleeping with my eyes slightly open. So last night I had a hard time going to sleep, because I didn’t want the stabby eye pain to come back! I finally got to sleep, but woke up every hour or two and put Thera Tears in both eyes, and went back to sleep. So if you don’t count waking up 6 times a night, I got a good nights sleep, and no stabby eye pain, so that was good.

I’ll be so glad when this is all over! I just want things to be back to normal 😦

The stress of the eye problems and not sleeping good has been hard on my stomach, I’ve been feeling just sort of ‘off’ and stressed out. I had some really good exercise sessions this week, including a nice 3 mile walk at the park with Barclay on Sunday. At my weigh in today I’m down to 249 – into the 240s we go! As long as it keeps going down, I’ll be happy!

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So, scratching my eye last week was just the latest in a long string of eye problems I’ve been having. Back in October I went to the eye doctor because I would occasionally wake up with one eye blurry (either one), and it would last a few hours to a few days. He thought it was just dry eyes, and told me to use drops. I still would have occasional blurry days, but sometimes I’d have a couple good weeks without problems.

Meanwhile, I could occasionally have stabbing eye pains in the middle of the night, but I thought I was just rubbing my eye on my pillow. Eventually that is exactly what happened last week, and I did have a serious abrasion to prove it.

But yesterday something different happened – a stabbing eye pain in my good eye, in the middle of the day, while sitting on the couch watching TV.I had done nothing to bring it on, but suddenly my eye hurt so bad I couldn’t open it. I flushed it out with eye drops. I took an ibuprofin. I laid down for a bit to see if it would go away on it’s own. Finally I called the eye doctor, but he was out of town for the weekend, so he said to go to urgent care if it was bad. So Dave came home from the theater and took me to urgent care.

They have a routine of things they do, including a vision test, but my eye was in such intense pain I couldn’t hardly keep the other eye open to read the chart. Finally they put in pain drops, which stopped the pain right away. She stained my eye and looked for a foreign body or a scratch, but couldn’t find anything. So she diagnosed it as possible iritis – an infection of the eye. She gave me a perscription for antibiotic drops and a steroid for inflammation. Today my eye feels much better and the vision is back to normal, so there might be something to that.

She gave me a printout with info about iritis, and the symptoms include blurry vision, eye pain, and a few other things I haven’t been having. I’m sure I’ll see the eye doctor on Monday and see what he says. I hope this is it and they can clear it up. These stabbing eye pains are the most intense pain I’ve ever felt – I’ll be happy to get this cleared up and put it behind me!

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This is ridiculous! Things were going great,and then I woke up Thursday morning with a stabbing pain in my eye, so bad I couldn’t even convince the other eye to open up! We went to the urgent care clinic, and they put in drops to numb it, and then stained it and confirmed I had scratched it. They put on an eye patch, gave me antibiotic drops, and sent me on my way.

Friday the pain was back, and so bad I just couldn’t hardly stand it! I would just freeze up, fists clenched and shaking, it hurt so bad! Finally I called the urgent care back, and they told me to go to the ER or a regular eye doctor. So I called our eye doctor and he got me right in. He dialated it, stained it, looked at it with a camera on a computer, and showed me the big scratched area, overlapping my pupil. He said that made it particularly bad because if it scarred it would impact my vision. So he put stuff on it, gave me drops to use, and put a contact in my eye to act as a bandage and cover the damage so my eyelid wasn’t rubbing it all weekend. Then he told me to go home, hit the Ibuprofin hard, and rest and let my eye rest and heal. I’ll be seeing him again Monday.

My eye is still dilated, so everything is blurry on that side. It stings a little. I had to cancel taking pictures at a dog sports event this weekend 😦 and I’m stuck at the store while people pick through our last couple days open. Oh well. I was having an awesome week before this happened. Darn pillow!

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Well, I got brave and tried the Zyrtec again yesterday. I took one before we went for our walk at the park, since it was cold and rainy. I also bundled up, so I wasn’t just asking for it. I had a fine time and didn’t get hives, so that was good. No sign of any further anxiety attacks either. I have had some in the past month or so when I wasn’t taking Zyrtec, so I think they were not related to the new medicine, more related to some other stuff that’s going on and stressing me out. The anxiety attacks are in my head, but the cold hives are a genuine physical reaction to environment. Meditation and relaxation gets rid of the anxiety. Seems like Zyrtec gets rid of the hives 🙂

A commenter left this link to a news story out of Utah about Cold Uticaria. The picture of the hives is all too familiar -ouch! It’s good to know people are looking for a way to treat it. I can relate to everything in that article!

Woman with rare allergy to cold helping researchers in study

Well, the Zyrtec worked really well. I only took one, and I didn’t have hives again until today, even though there were several situations where I was expecting to get them – almost asking for it really! However, the second day after I took it I started to get anxiety and jitters and had trouble concentrating. I can’t say for sure it was the Zyrtec. The side effects of it don’t mention anything like that, except in the list of very rare side effects. And it’s also ‘that time’ (you ladies know what I mean) and sometimes that throws my body off in weird ways. I’ve had problems with anxiety attacks before, but I haven’t had one like this for a long time. I hate to blame the Zyrtec, when it could just be coincidence. The anxiety lasted until today also, and when I got some hives on my hands and feet this morning, I reached for a Claratin, just to be safe. I think I’ll wait a while before I try another Zyrtec.  It sure was nice to be hive-free for a few days though!

Some of my friends know I have a medical condition where I break out in hives when I get chilled. It’s called Cold Urticaria. It doesn’t have to be very cold to make it happen, I have had a miserable case of hives while in California on a warm summer day at Disneyland because I got splashed on the log ride! And I often get it on my hands while doing my morning chores outdoors, like feeding the chickens, or just from walking around barefoot inside. I keep towels on the floor in the bathroom to avoid stepping on the cold tiles. The hives can be the size of a pencil eraser, or several inches across, and if I get too many I start to feel woozy because the hives are actually fluid that is pulled out of the blood, causing low blood pressure. So it can be a pretty serious condition, in addition to being itchy!

It started about ten years ago, shortly after we moved to our farm, and I was out mowing the field on a regular cool day (we do live in the NW, after all) and got itchy bumps all over my upper body. I had no idea what was going on, it was freaky. Later I got them on my feet, and it hurt to walk on them, I remember spending a miserable evening on the couch wondering what was going on. When I asked my doctor (I had a doctor I really liked at the time) she thought it was weird. Eventually we figured out it was the cold that was doing it. There was no reason for it to happen, some people just suddenly get it, and no telling if I would eventually out grow it. She tried some anti-histamines on me, and eventually we settled on Claratin, which doesn’t stop it, but takes the edge off. I always keep a few pills in my wallet.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it seems to effect everything I do, from the moment I get up in the morning, to bedtime. I have to constantly consider the weather, where I’m going to be, what I’ll be doing, if I should take a Claratin to ward off any potential hives. And I’m pretty scatterbrained sometimes, so it’s hard for me to remember to think ahead. Even after ten years of dealing with it I’ll do something I shouldn’t and end up broken out and miserable. Last week I dozed off in the shade on the swingchair after work, and even though it was a beautiful warm summer day, I broke out something fierce! Cool airconditioned rooms in the heat of summer will set it off. Getting sweaty on a breezy day will do me in. I don’t even wear my wedding ring anymore because my fingers frequently swell up with hives and then it’s too tight. I can’t pick up metal tools in the garage without gloves on on a cold day. I can’t spend the evenings outside using my telescope without being bundled up like an arctic adventurer.

The doctor I liked moved away a few years ago, and last year I tried a new doctor, and when I told him about the cold hives he completely blew it off with “I’ve never heard of anything like that”. He shut me down so fast I wanted to cry. He had no idea how serious it was, and with that attitude, he certainly wasn’t going to be any help.

Yesterday I was surfing for any new info on this condition, and the wiki article linked above has a reference to a medical paper I had not seen before, which indicates a particular medicine might be helpful. I looked up that medicine and it’s now available OTC as Zyrtec. So I got some yesterday and took it, and all afternoon and evening I was out playing with the dog, checking on the chickens, doing this and that, and not once did I feel the tingle of hives coming on. After dark I was sitting outside on the swing chair in a t-shirt, amazed that I was not breaking out. I was really impressed, I think this is much better than the Claratin. I wouldn’t wish this condition on anyone, and there’s no reason I got it, and no telling when it will go away. If I can find medicine to make me feel better and not break out in hives at the slightest chill, that would be a significant improvement in my life!