is it just my imagination?

[heather g]

Hello fellow DEZ members. Happy Holidays. I was wondering if anyone else finds their eyes are more comfortable whe they have a cold/sinus thing going on. This is the second time I am pretty sick with the cold symptoms and strangely my eyes (while not terrific) are a little less uncomfortable. Awhile back my DR put me on allergy drops thinking this may help since I am better with the cold symptoms.
Could it be my body releasing histamines and antibodies to fight the virus that is giving my eyes the comfort? I mean I use 50% less drops and don't have the foreign body sensation. Even went to the movies tonight AFTER shopping at a mall a bit and still was doing fairly well. That is a miracle. And It isn't because I am not thinking about my eyes. Always thinking about them and how to plan my activities to give me some warm compress time between.
If there are any thoughts on this I would love to hear them. Maybe the histamine is helping??? If so let's bottle it and use it!
The only problem is having the actual cold stinks! The rest of me feels like crap! But Just for a day or 2 I get a little sample of how my eyes could feel. Oh and this is with using cold medicine which has antihistamines/decongestants sparingly and they aren't drying my eyes out to the point of discomfort either.
Heather

[dianat]

Heather,

This is not your imagination. I've read this many, many times on this site. It may be mucin production, though I'm not certain I can recall reading a medical explanation. I like to be different and have never experiences such a phenomenon. My eyes scream when I'm sick. It's unfair you must be sick to feel relief of your dry eyes.

Where's Uniontown? I'm in Cinci.

D

[kitty]

Might it also be that a stuffed nose means no place for what tears there are to go? The plumbing is backed up when one has a cold. By the way, plugs don't occlude 100%. I'm looking forward to my first cold with plugs!

[YGB]

Kitty makes a good point. Knock on wood, I have not caught a cold or the like since my dry eye condition started, but I know that when I went to see Dr. Tseng, they did a 1 minute modified schirmer test with 2 q-tips stuffed up my nose. The q-tips blocked the tear passage ways and I could feel the tears pooling in my eyes (although I looked odd, it felt good while it lasted ). My schirmer score was normal with this modified test. I guess this gives me some hope that if nothing else works, I can always sting some long stem q-tips up my nose for some occasional comfort.

Actually, I may go for lower plugs this coming week since winter is coming and I don't want my dry eyes to fly south for the winter with the heat and low humidity since they are finally showing signs of improvement.

[dianat]

Regarding the q-tip thing...

I also saw a doctor long ago who did a Schirmers test wtih a q-tip (or an ear bud for you Brits, correct?) It was explained to me that tickling the inside of the nose triggers tearing in the eyes.

A person who cannot manufacture tears at all would then not react with the q-tip tickling technique. Those who do respond like me, can indeed manufacture tears, but simply aren't doing so due to perhaps nerve/communication issues as is the theory for post-LASIK casualties.

I'm no q-tip, nose-picking expert but that's how it was explained to me.

[YGB]

Regarding the q-tip thing...

I also saw a doctor long ago who did a Schirmers test wtih a q-tip (or an ear bud for you Brits, correct?) It was explained to me that tickling the inside of the nose triggers tearing in the eyes.

A person who cannot manufacture tears at all would then not react with the q-tip tickling technique. Those who do respond like me, can indeed manufacture tears, but simply aren't doing so due to perhaps nerve/communication issues as is the theory for post-LASIK casualties.

Thanks Diana! This really makes sense. It also makes me wonder ... if a person can manufacture tears by tickling the nose, then maybe doing this periodically may help stimulate the connections that were lost through LASIK or some other nerve problem. As a layman, I would think of this process being similar to physical therapy needed in most physical damage cases.

Nobody has ever recommended to me that this be done once or twice a day like warm compresses, but aside from sticking a q-tip up ones nose, I can't see what the harm would be (heck you're just stimulating what you would want your natural function to be doing on its own). Would that be a bad thing? Perhaps I'll ask my eye doc the next time I see him. Of course, this will likely confirm to him that I am the most intense patient he has. I have already said this to him about 2 months ago but he denied it (I think he was being nice and he would likely have a hard time denying that I am pretty intense if I asked him again ).

[Julie1]

You guys crack me up!! I don't know where else I would find a discussion about sticking q-tips up noses except on the Dry Eye Zone. I was laughing as I read your posts, Diana and YGB!!!

[dianat]

There is nowhere else, Julie1, where you will find such a discussion. We are truly priveleged here.

[YGB]

Yes. I suppose we are like the crew in the great show M.A.S.H. Just like they didn't want to be in a MASH unit in the Korean War, we don't want to be in the DEZ or anyplace else with dry eye. However, if you're here (or anywhere for that matter), you may as well make the best of it.

Now I'm off to see that ageless wonder Dick Clark (or maybe a computer generated puppet like version of him) bring in the New Year!

[Rebecca Petris]

Yes. I suppose we are like the crew in the great show M.A.S.H.

Now that was a dangerous analogy to invoke. I can already hear the character attributions .

[YGB]

Now that was a dangerous analogy to invoke. I can already hear the character attributions .

I'd like to be Hawkeye or maybe in my current condition I should be Hawk "dry" eye .

[heather g]

Well I finally got my sick self back online after the New Year and totally cracked up at these posts! I can just imagine my husbands surprise to see me adding Q tips up my nose to my lid scrub, warm compress routine!I laugh everytime I think about it. Anyhow I am starting to feel better and as such the dry eye is back. Really bad because now the medicne is making me really dry. sigh! Now I had a short vacation from dry eye and didn't even get to wear make up.
I have a doctor who wants to plug my upper ducts now. I wonder what the effects would be on the eyes having a cold and all the ducts plugged? Would it cause problems like sinus infections or eye infections? I have been hesitating to plug them so now I have another reason to think about it.
Dianat, you are about 4 hours from me. I live in the akron canton area. I go thru Cincinnati every year to get to Louisville, Ky to see family.
Heatherg

[dianat]

Heatherg,

I don't think plugging your tear ducts is going to cause any sinus restrictions in terms of overall sinus drainage, etc.

My guess is that when we are sick perhaps we manufacture more mucins which is a component to a healthy tear film. The mucins help our tears to stick, thus making our eyes feel better. I'm no B.J. Hunnicutt, just a lay person making an uneducated guess.

Uniontown sounded familiar...probably because I have roots in Dover. I grew up there actually. I can't picture Uniontown on the map, but it mustn't be too far from Dover.

D

[heather g]

Dianat,
Uniontown is about 40 minutes North from Dover. I went to nursing school at KSU in New philly. I am right off of 77 if that sounds familiar! Thanks for the info. I am considering the upper plugs just don't want to have constant tearing. Can't imagine that now as they are so dry all the time...
Heather

[YGB]

Logical diagnosis BJ.. I still think a few q-tips in the nasal passage may also help. Back in my day in the states, we would even bill this as a surgical procedure since it is invasive.

Rebecca clearly is more of a Colonel Potter rather than a Colonel Henry Blake. The DEZ is kept ship shape and run like a well oiled machine except for the occasional antics of cast. I suppose DEZadmin is Radar since he really seems to have his ear to the ground and helps keep everyone in line with searches and such. I'd have to give the Charles Winchester role to Neil for his very intellectual web links that many of us lay people have a hard time understanding. Frank Burns is played by your respective rudest/coldest dry eye MD. I would give Lucy the role of Father Mulcahy since she seems to have a type of higher power. The Klinger role goes to all of the DEZ members who have a user name where you do not know what gender they are . And ... drum roll please ... the role of Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan is quite an easy choice since there are only so many blonde haired women with pictures on the DEZ. Therefore, I think we would all agree that the consensus pick has to go to Toril.

My apologies to anyone I left out (and also my apologies to some I put in). There are only so many crew members and I have only so much web time before the wife boots me off. Hope everyone is as well as can be with more wellness to come! Let's hope that just like the MASH crew got to go home, we too will get to go back to life without DES in the future.