You ever have one of those days where you want to lay your head down on your desk and just let the world spin unremarked for a day or two? I’m having one of those days today, which is frustrating because I had a decent weekend. I got to play video games with some friends, hang out online with those same friends while I cleared most of Dragon Age: Origins (which you’ll have read about by the time you read this since I was too busy last Friday to write a blog post and will just be pitching a post about that into the empty Friday slot from last week), and had a great and intense D&D session session to close it out. I can’t really feel positive about that, though, because the eye problems that are not even two weeks past clearing up have flared up again which means that even my previous maintenance care is no longer working and I’m not sure why. I could make some guesses if I had to, but I’d be shooting in the dark and firing at random rather than at any kind of target. The best of these possibilities is “something has changed for the worse” and that sucks because it is probably the case. The next-most plausible is “the bottle of eye drops I’ve been using isn’t as effective as the one I was using the recovery period of the last flare up” which sucks because they’re supposed to be the exact same stuff and this would mean that I got incredibly unlucky and was given a bad bottle of eye drops prior to my latest refill.

For that to be true, they’d either need to be entirely non-functioning or somehow weak enough that they sorta work (which keeps my left eye in good shape) but not as effectively (which would explain why my right eye is reacting since that was the worse of my eyes). This feels rather far-fetched, but it would explain why these flare-ups are happening, since I swapped bottles back to use up the older one right as I got back to my old maintenance dosage (which I did a week and a half ago, which is about how long this problem takes to occur again if it I’m not continuing to treat my eye once the flare-up has ended). I used the newer bottle during the entire recovery period since I had the older bottle as “keep it in my bag for my midday dose at work” bottle of eye drops, but that meant I used it once a day and the newer bottle twice a day, which could explain why I was still recovering. It just feels really implausible. I mean, it’s not like this is a specially-mixed medication or anything. It’s a specific thing that can be ordered and, unless both the pharmacy and I messed up verifying that I’m taking the same medication, it would seem incredibly unlikely that this bottle just isn’t as effective as the new one is. I mean, it’s possible the older bottle has gone bad or separated out in a weird way that resisted the shaking I do every time I use it so that most of the actually medically beneficial stuff has drained out, but it kind of beggars belief that something like this could have happened.

Regardless of the reason, I’ve got a call in to my ophthalmologist to get my eye checked out again. Which will probably mean another prescription, one or more additional appointments at an inconveniently located clinic, long wait times, and two or more lost hours of work time during a week that has a D&D game I can’t be late for. All of which is to say nothing of the fact that this really sucks, mentally and emotionally, since it looked like this was going away and I haven’t had a flare-up since November of 2022 (which was technically the other eye rather than the one eye that started it all and is currently acting up) and now have had two within the same calendar month. I thought I’d gotten through the worst of this incredibly uncomfortable, frustrating, and emotionally draining problem. I mean, there’s nothing like being plagued with constant itchiness, irritation, pain, light sensitivity, and the sensation of having something stuck in your eye to make you feel like you’ve got no power over yourself. Literally nothing I do until I go get this checked out and a prescription written will bring relief, based on past flare-ups anyway. I’m going to swap back to the new bottle of eyedrops to see if it helps, but I’m not hopeful. At least I should know pretty quick given that it has stopped getting worse immediately whenever I’ve found the right intervention in the past. If the new bottle works when I dose my eye tonight and tomorrow morning, I’ll know instantly and can call off the appointments. After I toss out the older bottle of theoretically defective eye drops, of course.

The worst part of this is that I’m four more nights away from my new mattress and the solution to my back pain, four work days away from a long weekend–my first chance to rest up from my super busy, demanding, and exhausting work schedule in two months–and five days away from my birthday. This is really kind of spoiling my whole “try to be excited about this weekend” thing. Plus, between my eye and my back and the mounting exhaustion/burnout from my job, August 2024 is really reinforcing my whole “August is my least favorite month of the year” thing. Which might feel bad to say given that it is my birth month, but I don’t really set much stock by my birth date (only as much as I’m legally required to, given how much stuff revolves around birthdays for the government and insurance stuff) and this month has been my least favorite month (even when my birth date still mattered to me) due to all the trauma. There’s probably no salvaging it and I’m not inclined to attempt to do so at this point in my life. I just want to have a few unremarkable Augusts before I consider changing my mind when I’m nearing my fortieth birthday or whatever. Or to just get through a couple weeks with no new stressors. Or for my eye to be as suddenly and unexpectedly fine as it was suddenly and unexpectedly not fine. Just as this irritation is causeless as far as my doctor is concerned (and I’m beginning to REALLY doubt he’s done the work to try to actually figure out what’s going on), I’d totally be fine if there was no reason my eye stopped needing constant care to stay in working order. I’m jut so tired of worrying that every itch or feeling of irritation is another flare up…