It was the afternoon of yesterday when I noticed an odd discomfort near my right eye. The pain was slight and only flared up if I pressed near my eye socket. This was strange because I didn’t remember smashing my face against anything. I looked into a mirror in the bathroom but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so I let it be until I got home. When arrived at my abode, I looked in a mirror again. The bottom eye lid was puffy, swollen, and a bit red. Something about this was not right.
It wasn’t that painful if I didn’t touch it but any contact in that area did stir up some sensitivity. I made a decision to see a doctor the next morning. This was something that I didn’t want to wait for my family doctor to see, so I just went to one of the two walk-in clinics that are a stone’s throw from my home. I waited about ten minutes for a doctor to tell me I had a hordeolum or more commonly and stupidly called a stye, an infection of one of the glands near the eyelids. One of the glands is blocked and infected. In my case, you can see a white dot on the bottom part of my eyelid, that’s where the problematic gland is and where the pus is trying come out. Nice eh?
The doctor told me that this is a very common infection and the standard course of treatment is warm compresses to the area. The heat is supposed to open up the gland so the infection can drain and I can get pus in my eye. If the compresses fail to make things better, the doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics. I’m going to hold off on taking drugs for this because I’m a believer of not using antibiotics until absolutely necessary. I was warned, however, that if the area gets too infected, it will have to be lanced.
I’ve never had one of these before and I hope to never have one again. It’s more of an annoyance than anything but right eye looks stupid.