Blepharitis

It may shock you to learn that I have been diagnosed with blepharitis.

Blepharitis is an inflammation of the eyelids. In this artist's rendering, it looks sort of elegant and evil.

Some people with blepharitis look like a pink-skinned elephant, apparently. Happily, this is a random Google image, not me.

You know that gunk you wake up with sometimes in the morning…when your eyelids are kind of stuck shut? Like in the close-up photo below??? Ewww…who takes these photos, anyway?

These, I believe, are fairly severe cases of blepharitis. Even when I went to the doctor because my eye was "gunky," I was nowhere near this bad.

However, even though I just have the everyday garden variety of blepharitis, it still has the benefit of making me more interesting to my optometrist-wanna-be son-in-law. We have something to talk about now besides "How are your classes going? Any hard tests lately?"

And besides, it makes me sound so knowledgeable to be able to say, "blepharitis."

(To be honest, it took me quite a while to remember what the name of my gunky eye was. Blepharasia? Blephanoia? Bleph-a-what-do-you-call-it??)

So the eye doctor told me that my gunky eye is NOT just an "allergy to dust" acting up. It's a long-term condition that I'll probably always have. Boo to that. But it's easy to treat. At first I had to use lubricating eye drops and erythromycin goo at night to get the whole flare-up to calm itself down. But now I just have to wash my eyes 2x a day with baby shampoo. That's it. I can use the more extreme measures if I ever have another flare-up.

I'm a wimp about getting things like soap or eye drops in my eyes, but the baby shampoo really does live up to its slogan of "No More Tears." And no more goopy eye.

PS - So sad - the officer in yesterday's shooting (see post below) died from his wounds. He was only 41 years old. The suspect, age 88, was killed by the SWAT team. No happy endings here for anyone.