new year

So I had that clogged tear duct in my left eye.

It started in earnest at the beginning of December, the day we brought Boo in to the eye doctor to get his eyes checked.  (Yes, our three year old needed to see an opthamologist.)  My eye had excessive tearing up, pressure on my eyeball, sore skin around my eye because of the salt-water constantly seeping out of it, and my sinus gave off pressure like whoa.  Painful, inconvenient.

But two days after Boo's eye appointment, I went in for my routine check-up (that I hadn't had done in probably four years), got my new prescription, and then had a needle shoved into my tear ducts and saline squirted into it... only to have it squirt out the other duct on that eye, instead of into the back of my throat like it should have.  Throbbing pain, on top of the eye dilation and then the reverse eye dilation.  I had to go to work that day, too, and what misery that was.

So, the eye.  The eye.  The teary, weepy, evil eye.  Betrayer eye, affixed to a betrayer body.  Between the pityriasis rosea and the clogged tear duct, something was telling me that maybe the miscarriage was a harbinger of Weird Maladies.

I got a referral to an eye surgeon in the Twin Cities metro area.  Amazingly enough, it's the same doctor my mother-in-law was referred to when she had her own clogged ducts going on.  It was far enough out that there was the hope the clogged duct would just work its way out on its own.  I did the hot compresses, the sinus massaging, to no avail.  In fact, for a while there, it made the pain and the weeping worse.  So I stopped doing it altogether, except when I'd do a quick massage to try and alleviate sinus pressure.

I thought about going to my regular doctor to check out the sinus thing, but everything I'd read online about a sinus infection indicated a lot more was going on that just a simple clog.  Plus I didn't have green crap coming out of my nose, too, no coughing or lung cookies...  So I dropped that idea.

So now it's, what, three weeks later?  Having gotten used to my condition, I haven't worn make-up in forever, I carry tissues with me everywhere, and I have gotten used to daubing my eyeball as needed.

Except on Saturday, I went to blow my nose and this... ick came out.  Foul stuff.  And it was like something shifted in my head.  I can breath out of my left nostril again, the pressure is gone...  And the weeping is pretty much non-existent.  I haven't had an actual non-sad tear run out of my eye for a few days (even though I have been daubing, but I'm not sure if that's out of habit or necessity).

Of COURSE the appointment with the specialist is in two days.  And as far as having medical bills to pay, I SHOULD cancel it and save myself from wracking up another bill, but for shits and giggles I'm going to go.  I want to hear from someone knowledgeable that my eye is okay again.  IF it's okay again.  To ask questions about why the clog happened in the first place.  To see how long my eye will be sensitive to moisture levels.

Go figure.  But I think, on another level, this eye thing has been a metaphor for ME.  *I* am clogged up, and in order to be clear again, I need to blow away all the foul things that have been festering inside me, the jealousies and bitterness and stress and desperation.  I know the turning of the years aren't much more than symbolic, but sometimes I think we need those symbols as a touchstone, something quasi-tangible that can help us realize (or re-realize) our direction, what's important.

So hey eye, thanks for the lesson.  Now get back to work.