Well, there went two weeks of my life… I went back to the eye doctor on Thursday for my follow-up appointment. In the 10 days since I had seen him for the first time, my eyes had gotten worse like he had said, and then never got better. I have been a non-functional person in that time, unable to even open the shades in my apartment because the light blinds me. I haven’t been able to read or write, and most of the time, I’ve had to keep my right eye closed. The pain in my right eye often went up into my brain. Fulfilling my obligations has been difficult (teaching yoga, doing my talks, doing my grocery shopping), but I am proud of the manner in which I can switch so quickly from my own pain to completely being there for others. Driving has been the hardest part. One eye can not tolerate any amount of light, and the other eye is functioning at about 30%. The other drivers don’t know this, but when I was forced to drive, it was a community effort. They had to subconsciously work with me. Throughout this time, I have been wondering what is so wrong with me that I don’t have the capacity to heal. Last weekend, I had asked my healing friends if they would mind sending me some energy and one of them suggested I put colloidal silver drops in my eyes to clear out the infection. I managed to get myself to Whole Foods and bought the silver drops last Sunday. But five days later, nothing had improved! I was not a happy girl when I went back to the doctor. He had given me nothing to help me live my life- only the antibacterial drops that he said would do nothing. I told him that I think I need steroids and he agreed… I am sure the steroid drops were what allowed me to continue hiking when something similar happened to me on the AT. Why couldn’t he have prescribed them for me 12 days ago?! This time, I was left with nothing to help with either the pain or the light sensitivity. The doctor just said that I was hit with a particularly nasty strain of virus. “You know the types of colds that take 2-3 weeks to get over?… This is not one of those. It’s much worse.”
Great…
I guess I just had some very bad luck!
That night, I had to give another talk (the fifth one with my eye infection!). My nice host, Michelle, told me that her son had 5 eye infections during the summer. He had to keep going back to the eye doctor and was given nothing to help treat it, like me. I felt better knowing I am not the only one!
My biggest crowd yet (78 people!) came to my talk on Thursday and helped boost my energy for the evening. Had I not had my eye infection, I would have had that talk taped. Oh, well. Someday, it will be!
I finally got the steroid drops yesterday and already felt a bit of improvement after putting a single drop in one of my eyes. The membrane on that eye has thickened and there is a lot of extra stuff floating around in it, so my vision is very clouded, but I was able to read a little bit last night for the first time in a long time!
Of course, now that my eye is beginning to heal, my knee is screaming again. I still have to figure out what I am going to do about that!
I also need to slowly start building my strength back up. I lost 5 pounds since I was hit with the stomach virus on January 5th and have felt very weak since. My digestive system is still very out of order. No food is appealing to me, except maybe toast. After having been out all day on Thursday to go to the doctors, teach yoga, and give my talk, I was too weak to do anything at all on Friday, except pick up my steroid drops.
I really hope February is a much better month!