There was something wrong with my eye all day Thursday and when I woke up on Friday it looked like someone had beaten the crap outta me. A sty! On my eye! How crazy lucky I had the day off because man was I hideous. K-dub called me around 11am to share the Crazy Boy update ("He's just not that into me.") and she had no advice, only mockery. Then I called my mommy who also had no treatment ideas. I call bullshit on being too old to have your mom able to help you. So I gave up and called Ryan and asked him to call his Dad, the pharmacist, who's been my source of all medical advice for the past 6 years.
Ryan reported back that Iowan Pharmacist Dad said whatever I do, don't buy any over-the-counter Sty-Be-Gone remedy, as they're all snake oil. The only cure for a sty is time apparently and all I should and could do would be to soak a washcloth in hot ("as hot as you can stand it!") water and apply to the sty eye 4 or 5 times a day. How fucking primitive. Have we no technology for this? Both K-dub and my mom asked if this was like the "Iowa way" of sty treatment. As if in Iowa, they're still prescribing citrus fruit or a good leeching.
So I spent my Friday off watching terrible movie after terrible movie on various cable channels with a scaldingly hot towel on my eye. By the end of the day I told K-dub the puffiness has gone down but I burned off the skin on the left side of my face. I'm so pretty!
At the end of last week I felt my eye gearing up to cultivate another pearl of sadness but I was unprepared for what I woke up with Friday morning. It looked like I was in a particularly laser-focused bar fight. My right lid was so swollen, droopy and red I couldn't really see out of that eye. I made it through the weekend, whining and moaning and generally being the best wife ever but then when it wasn't any better by Monday I decided to call my doctor. Because she is magical, she offered me an appointment that afternoon.
And thus I learned I have blepharitis. Which is the best and worst word ever but really just means "hey, your eyelid's inflamed." There is some kind of cream she could have prescribed but the best remedy is — wait for it — a hot washcloth on the eye. They have invented lasers that give blind people sight but when you get an eye cold all they have is hot water?! WTF, ophthalmology!
And then, and then! She says there is a trick she learned for the best way to perform the hot compress. "You take a potato, heat it up in the microwave, wrap it in a paper towel and apply that to your eye." A potato on my eye.
A potato on my eye!
It's because the potato retains heat longer than a washcloth but still, I just worry there will come a day I end up being leeched.