Dry eyes.

Two nights ago, I was in the jacuzzi for a littel pre-bedtime soak. Not unusual. When getting out of the jacuzzi, I rubbed my eyes a little bit and found that my left eye was slightly swollen at the inner corner of my eye. Within a few minutes, the upper, inner corner of my left eye was really swelled up so that it covered the lid. I took some anti-allergy stuff, which didn't help any. When I woke up the next morning, my whole eye was swollen, almost completely shut.

I called in sick, and made a doctors appointment for that afternoon. It's the third time I've seen him for eye problems, either with redness, itchiness, or swelling. He's not really sure what's going on. He thought it was either the start of a bacterial infection, or an allergic reaction to something, and, not knowing, gave me meds for both. Great.

I talked to my brother and dad a little bit. They don't have much of a better idea, but agreed with what I've been thinking for a little while, that I have chronicly dry eyes. I did some reading about chronic eye dryness (are your eyes drying up just reading this?), and at least a few web pages said that computer users can be particularly susceptible since we don't blink as much. I can TOTALLY see myself doing this.

So, I'm going to self-diagnose, er... myself.

I'm going to say that I don't blink enough (I just read computer users may blink 7 times a minutes, compared to 22 times per minute average), and can become tear-deficient. This can cause dry spots on my eyes, or a buildup of junk in my eyes, which can block ducts and generally cause irritation and inflammation.

So, to fight that, I'm going to take more computer breaks, and try to concentrate on blinking more (probably impossible). Further, I'm going to have a healthy supply of artificial tears onhand, both at work and at home, to be used multiple times a day, particularly before bed and in the morning. And the next time I have a significant problem (swelling, etc), I'm going to insist on seeing an eye-doc.

There. Let's try that for a couple weeks and see how things go, right?

Now, I guess I continue with the regimen of antibiotic eyedrops and anti-histimines as perscribed? I don't see why I should except that I was instructed to do so.