The window to my soul hurts

This week, I have been battling with a raging eye infection. I use the word "raging" because it conveys a sense of pain, burning, and Deniro about my eye. Some of those are accurate descriptions. Some, sadly, are not. My eye would never pass for Deniro's eye, but he did his with makeup so I think we're even.

I woke up Friday with a pain in my right eye -- like I had been punched. The kids weren't home and the wife insisted that she hadn't punched me in the eye the night before. She giggled a bit but I chalked that up to the fact that she was still asleep when I asked her and she was probably dreaming of something humorous I had said right before bed, like "please don't punch me in the eye tonight." I'm a laugh riot before bed. I looked int he mirror (usually a mistake) and saw what looked like a white pimple on the top lid. Not on the outside and not on the inside, but in the edge. It didn't look like or hurt like a stye would (I get plenty of those) but it hurt. So I did the unthinkable and I called a doctor.

Later that afternoon, I went to the doctor and he spent a minute and a half with me, including introductions and the exam. I have, it seems, a small infection of the oil gland in the eye lid. Oh. That doesn't sound all that appealing, but whatever shall I do? He recommended warm compresses and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic ointment which I was to apply to my eye. He didn't exactly say how to and when I asked he made it seem obvious and easy, like putting a bottle or my finger in my eye or on the edge of my eyelid is the most obvious thing in the world. He even told me the technical term for the infection which I promptly forgot. I have since looked it up and found that one name is the "chalazion." There is another word starting with an M but I shall explain why that doesn't matter.

I'm not sure how to pronounce chalazion -- is it like "kuh-lay-zhion" which sounds like a social event? Is it "challah-tziyon" which is egg bread from Jerusalem? Maybe it is "ka-li-zone" which would make it rally delicious. But at least it isn't "chilazon" which would refer to a snail. Anyway, I have enough questions about pronunciation to make the name memorable. A meibomian gland lipogranuloma is not nearly as easy to remember.

I put the ointment stuff on that little white bumpy thing starting Friday afternoon, and by Saturday evening, though it stung and itched and hurt most of the day, the bump had gone down. I continued applying the stuff through Sunday to fill out the course of treatment even though by Sunday mid-day, all seemed right with the world. By Monday morning, it was coming back (maybe in a slightly different place?) and by Monday night, a new, large bump had developed and getting to sleep Monday night was very difficult. The lid above has also begun to swell. By now, Wednesday morning, with repeated treatment with the tube o' goo, the bump has receded and the lid, though swollen and incessantly itchy, has turned a lovely shade of purple. It makes me look, well, less adorable. "Posh," you say, "You couldn't look any less adorable!" Thank you, I think, but it is true. Even my asymmetry is asymmetrical now.

What I do know is that this is not pink eye. I am not a girl so I don't get anything pink. I won't even buy Songs from the Big Pink, or drink pink lemonade. Why is it that pink eye isn't reserved for girls? So this isn't catching, it has no long term ill effects, it can't turn into anything else and it just hurts, itches and is annoying. Just like a man.

I'm sure that this should be motivating me to be introspective about the value of binocular vision or vision on the whole, or at least made scads of dumb jokes about lacking vision, seeing only one side of things, ignoring things on the periphery or such but I just can't see myself doing any of that.