My corneal abrasion

Last night I started having pain in my left eye when I would blink. I immediately took out my contacts, but the pain only seemed to get worse. I decided to go to bed and figured it would get better. I just did not want to have to go to the Dr. since I lost my health insurance when I quit my job to move up North. Unfortunately, laying with my eyes closed hurt as much as blinking and the discomfort kept me up most of the night. At 2am I admitted defeat and came out of the bedroom to start looking up eye doctors in the area. I found one close and decided I would call first thing in the morning to make an apt. I figured an appointment couldn't cost more than about $50, and I remembered I still had $500 in my health savings account, so it wouldn't be too bad, right?

I got to the optometrist today at 11:00 and told them I thought I had an infection or a scratch on my eye or something. I explained my symptoms, swollen, watery, bright red, burning eyes, with an extreme sensitivity to bright light (I could hardly keep my eyes open in the sunlight). She took a look and it turns out, I was right about the scratch. I have a corneal abrasion. The Dr. thinks I got it from either removing my contacts or from not using wetting drops enough while I wear my contacts. I have dry eyes and when they're not moistened and I move my eyes my contacts move and rub against the cornea a little, which causes damage.

She said there is nothing to do for the pain, I just have to wait for it to heal, which will take about a week...and in fact, I have to make the pain WORSE every 3 hours with some REALLY expensive ($97) anti-biotic eye drops that sting like crazy. My appointment ended up costing $100 AND she said I have to come back tomorrow and again later in the week to make sure there is no scarring, which would damage my vision permanently. Each appointment will cost about $100 (which IS the discounted cash-pay rate). So in the end, my stupid cornea will end up costing about $400. I'm SOOO glad I still had money in my HSA account!!

So you wanna see the damage?

On the bright side, I get to wear these awesome sunglass inserts to avoid pain from the light. Stylish, right?