I have been back at work, doing my usual overtime, for a week and I’m already worn out again. This time, it’s not just the usual burnout stuff (though I’m sure that hasn’t helped any). This time, a significant part of why I feel so worn out and tired is because my eye problems are flaring up again. Or maybe it’s “eyes” problem. It’s the same problem, but this time it’s flaring up in both eyes at the same time. The old familiar irritation, sensitivity, itchiness, and inability to resolve any of those in a quick manner has left me feeling drop-dead exhausted from the constant sensation that is having eyes right now. Each of them itches like I’ve got gunk in the corner of my eyes that needs cleaning out and every time I blink I feel like there’s something trapped underneath my eyelid. It’s a frustrating pair of ghost sensations that won’t stop no matter what I do because there’s no gunk and nothing in my eye other than the irritation (and maybe some ulceration, but if I see that, then it’s time to call my eye doctor and get them checked out again rather than just treat it at home with extra drops). It’s wearing me down completely, this inescapable, unignoreable set of sensations, and I’m ready for it to stop. The only relief I get from them is when I’m sleeping, so I’m very hopeful that the double-vaccination I’m getting today (flu and COVID) will knock me on my ass for a couple days while my body recovers from the vaccinations and my eyes recover from their current irritation.

I thought I was mostly done with this kind of irritated eye reaction. My current ophthalmologist (who seems genuinely interested in trying to figure out why this is happening at all rather than just getting the symptoms into some kind of holding pattern) has one idea, but my insurance won’t cover it yet and the medication involved is prohibitively expensive without insurance picking up at least part of the bill. That said, if it could relieve me of this problem that has been making my life worse for the last four and a half years, I might be willing to spring for it. I’d really like to stop needing daily eyedrops, eye-specialist appointments every few months, and a bedtime eye care routine that takes twenty minutes. I’m very tired of needing to take care of this problem and maintain a state of constant vigilence so I can notice immediately if I need to increase my eyedrops daily dosage in order to prevent things rapidly worsening to a point that could permanently impact my vision (that ulceration I mentioned usually leaves scars and scars showing up on or near my iris, where the ulceration happens 99% of the time, can cloud my vision significantly) before I can get an appointment to get my eyes checked out. And all of that goes without mentioning how exhausting it is to disrupt my life every few months to get whatever appointments I can–initial check-ups, one-week follow-ups, two-week follow-ups, four-week follow-ups, and so on–since I cannot afford to wait or be picky. This problem costs me so much time and money (specialists aren’t cheaper than not seeing a doctor at all, even with insurance) that I’m sure I’d be noticeably better off if the problem hadn’t occurred in the first place.

Looming in the background of all this is a ton of other little “cheerful” thoughts. For instance, now I have a medical condition (or something) that would likely leave me permanently disabled should society collapse. I’d probably go blind before too long as a result of my eyes essentially attacking themselves. I mean, it only takes three days of this problem going untreated for me to start developing some pretty intense light sensitivity and one time early-on I went five days without being able to treat it and was in such constant pain that I had to keep the impacted eye closed constantly in order to avoid it being more than I could handle. I also find myself wondering if other people notice that one of my eyes naturally sits more closed than the other now, as a result of the aforementioned eye-closing and related squinting from back before I got it properly treated the first time. I also find myself wondering if maybe it’d be easier to lose the eye in the long run, or if this problem might ever escalate in that direction. It would be life-changing, losing an eye: everything I do these days has some kind of visual component save my podcasts and music. I’d go from being largely indepedent to being completely dependent on others and I have no one in my life I could really ask for that level of assistance.

It’s just a lot. Constantly. Difficult to parse or silence and impossible to outright ignore since I have to stay engaged with the sensations of my eyes in case things start getting worse or stop getting better. I can’t afford to ignore the signs. It makes me miss the simple days of just needing to remember to put in my eye drops once a day (from just a week prior to writing this, or two weeks prior to this being posted). I mean, I hate putting stuff in my eye and each dose is a massive battle to not flinch and spill the medication everywhere or drop the eyedrop bottle onto an unsanitary surface while the lid is off so I’d have to toss that bottle out and get a new one. These active periods are definitely worse since I’m currently doing that three times a day to one eye and two times a day to the other, but it’s never easy and the lack of pain or irritation during the inactive periods makes it all that much more difficult to convince myself to go through with putting the drops in. That said, I haven’t willingly missed a dose. I’ve forgotten here or there, but I’ve never chosen to miss a dose since I know that missing too many just leads to another flare-up. I just wish I knew how many was too many ahead of time so I could keep myself at the correct frequency for managing things rather than experiementing with less frequent doses until things start to get worse again and then slowly focusing in on a dosage that works without going overboard on how much of the eye drops I’m using (it’s not good for your eye to use them too much since these drops can also lead to damage to the eye if the circumstances change in a few specific ways). I’m just ready for this to be done. I hope a weekend will be enough [it was not].