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Hello everybody. I hope you guys are having a good day.
My name is Carl, I'm 24, I'm a student and a university teacher/course lecturer. The last few months have been hell. Luckily, over the last 4 days, I have found ways to make my condition, whatever it is, less invasive than it used to be. But before I get to my treatment (which is not anything revolutionary in the slightest), let me type down my "story".
A few months ago, I woke up with incredibly intense pain in one eye, presumably a corneal abrasion from my eyelid sticking to my cornea. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but it was horrible and scary, because I had never any issues with my eyes before. For a few days, I could hardly live. Reading anything was impossible. It passed after 4-5 days, but recurred 2 months later in the other eye. Then, shortly after that corneal abrasion healed, my eyes started feeling extremely dry and irritated. I went to my optometrist and she gave me a prescription for Muro 128, which is awesome but at the time it felt ineffective. After a few days, it was absolutely maddening. After 2 weeks, I felt like my life was over.
A day would be something like this: I would wake up in the morning in pain or in discomfort, scramble to put some gel drops in my eyes even though they were largely ineffective, and then half my thoughts would be dedicated to managing my eyes. Sometimes they felt cold, which many here refer to as "menthol feeling". Sometimes I would feel stings as if needles were shoved into my eyes. Sometimes it felt dry like sand paper. The "foreign" object feeling was nearly always an issue and I felt utterly powerless. For a time, I thought that I would have to live the rest of my life like this and to an extent it seems to be the case. I could hardly read paper, I couldn't look at screens for more than bursts of 10-15 seconds. I gave horrible lectures where I, the teacher, would constantly go in distress mode and put the class on hold because my eyes were all messed up. I had found a way to get my eyes to tear up: yawning. There was even a point where my jaw and throat were sore from "forcing" myself to yawn. I thought I would have to leave my job - a teacher who can't read is incompetent. I thought I would have to quit school because I normally spend 6-12 hours a day reading. I play games in my leisure time, and I read books.
So I took a few days off, picked up a few audiobooks and hoped that my eyes would get better. And if they didn't, then I would have thought that my quality of life had now largely gone. Fortunately, with the use of an absolutely ridiculous amount of eyedrops and warm compresses and cold compresses, an eye patch and some audiobooks, I managed to reduce my eye's irritation and I've come to understand that my dry eye problem is probably not as severe as I thought, but my eyes were just irritated and I didn't treat them well enough (or maybe they just needed time to heal). I had to use an outrageous quantity of preservative-free eyedrops as well as forced (and legitimate) yawning to finally end up having a decent amount of comfort. And I used Muro 128 to avoid corneal abrasions.
These days, I still wake up with dry eyes, and sometimes it doesn't seem to subside until around noon and eyedrops don't seem to be all that effective until then. It makes for some pretty bad morning classes, although not quite as bad as they used to be. Despite Muro 128, I still sometimes wake with "sticky" eyes, which is scary because I'm always afraid that my cornea will get messed up again. Plus putting that goop in my eyes is annoying, it gets stuck in my eyelashes which will sometimes poke my eyes at 2AM in the morning when I really don't want to be fighting with anything. But despite all those little things, I feel so much better now and I'm happy again. I still have to manage it - I bring eyedrops everywhere I go. I sometimes still use warm compresses. But I can look at things without feeling horrible. I can do my job.
After all this, what surprised me the most is just how sudden it all was. Everything was great, and the next day, "seeing" became difficult and shortly thereafter, I was a complete mess. I'm forced to conclude that my condition most likely wasn't as bad as I initially thought, but I feel like I caught a glimpse of what some people here have to put up with daily. I sincerely hope that you guys will find a way to solve or at least to cope better with the issues that you have to deal with. I'm still looking into ways to solve the problems that I still have.
Sorry this is a bit long, I guess I rambled a little bit. Forgive my English, it's my second language. Cheers everybody.
My name is Carl, I'm 24, I'm a student and a university teacher/course lecturer. The last few months have been hell. Luckily, over the last 4 days, I have found ways to make my condition, whatever it is, less invasive than it used to be. But before I get to my treatment (which is not anything revolutionary in the slightest), let me type down my "story".
A few months ago, I woke up with incredibly intense pain in one eye, presumably a corneal abrasion from my eyelid sticking to my cornea. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but it was horrible and scary, because I had never any issues with my eyes before. For a few days, I could hardly live. Reading anything was impossible. It passed after 4-5 days, but recurred 2 months later in the other eye. Then, shortly after that corneal abrasion healed, my eyes started feeling extremely dry and irritated. I went to my optometrist and she gave me a prescription for Muro 128, which is awesome but at the time it felt ineffective. After a few days, it was absolutely maddening. After 2 weeks, I felt like my life was over.
A day would be something like this: I would wake up in the morning in pain or in discomfort, scramble to put some gel drops in my eyes even though they were largely ineffective, and then half my thoughts would be dedicated to managing my eyes. Sometimes they felt cold, which many here refer to as "menthol feeling". Sometimes I would feel stings as if needles were shoved into my eyes. Sometimes it felt dry like sand paper. The "foreign" object feeling was nearly always an issue and I felt utterly powerless. For a time, I thought that I would have to live the rest of my life like this and to an extent it seems to be the case. I could hardly read paper, I couldn't look at screens for more than bursts of 10-15 seconds. I gave horrible lectures where I, the teacher, would constantly go in distress mode and put the class on hold because my eyes were all messed up. I had found a way to get my eyes to tear up: yawning. There was even a point where my jaw and throat were sore from "forcing" myself to yawn. I thought I would have to leave my job - a teacher who can't read is incompetent. I thought I would have to quit school because I normally spend 6-12 hours a day reading. I play games in my leisure time, and I read books.
So I took a few days off, picked up a few audiobooks and hoped that my eyes would get better. And if they didn't, then I would have thought that my quality of life had now largely gone. Fortunately, with the use of an absolutely ridiculous amount of eyedrops and warm compresses and cold compresses, an eye patch and some audiobooks, I managed to reduce my eye's irritation and I've come to understand that my dry eye problem is probably not as severe as I thought, but my eyes were just irritated and I didn't treat them well enough (or maybe they just needed time to heal). I had to use an outrageous quantity of preservative-free eyedrops as well as forced (and legitimate) yawning to finally end up having a decent amount of comfort. And I used Muro 128 to avoid corneal abrasions.
These days, I still wake up with dry eyes, and sometimes it doesn't seem to subside until around noon and eyedrops don't seem to be all that effective until then. It makes for some pretty bad morning classes, although not quite as bad as they used to be. Despite Muro 128, I still sometimes wake with "sticky" eyes, which is scary because I'm always afraid that my cornea will get messed up again. Plus putting that goop in my eyes is annoying, it gets stuck in my eyelashes which will sometimes poke my eyes at 2AM in the morning when I really don't want to be fighting with anything. But despite all those little things, I feel so much better now and I'm happy again. I still have to manage it - I bring eyedrops everywhere I go. I sometimes still use warm compresses. But I can look at things without feeling horrible. I can do my job.
After all this, what surprised me the most is just how sudden it all was. Everything was great, and the next day, "seeing" became difficult and shortly thereafter, I was a complete mess. I'm forced to conclude that my condition most likely wasn't as bad as I initially thought, but I feel like I caught a glimpse of what some people here have to put up with daily. I sincerely hope that you guys will find a way to solve or at least to cope better with the issues that you have to deal with. I'm still looking into ways to solve the problems that I still have.
Sorry this is a bit long, I guess I rambled a little bit. Forgive my English, it's my second language. Cheers everybody.
So kind of you to post up your experience ~ I know you can tell it helps people very much.
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