More eyeballs

I realized I haven’t talked about my eyeballs here lately. It’s a far cry from when they were the only thing I could think about, so as you might gather, they’re doing better. It helps that it’s winter, of course, but the allergy shots really seem to be helping, along with a handful of other things. I’ve been doing the allergy shots for almost a year, so starting in April, I’ll only have to go once every two weeks, instead of once a week. YAY! Going every week really hasn’t been that bad though. It gets me out of work early on Tuesdays and I get a guaranteed half hour to catch up on reading.

I’m still taking Claritin frequently—not quite daily, but it will probably become daily during the spring and summer. The Claritin doesn’t make my eyes any less red, but I’ve noticed that it makes them less itchy, so that keeps my wandering fingers from rubbing them. I’m still technically on a prescription allergy eye drop, but I ran out of my latest bottle a few days ago and have been trying to go without since then. My eyes are a teeny bit pinker, but it hasn’t been too bad so far.

A few other big steps are that I haven’t had to use dry eye drops in a long time, and I’m no longer eating flaxseed every day. In my experience, flaxseed really does help with dry eyes, and if it weren’t for the side effects, I would still be taking it. I’m still doing the eyelid scrub with baby shampoo to treat my blepharitis, but I’ll probably keep doing that for years.

My biggest concern right now is being able to wear contacts for the wedding, which will be several hours long. In the spring. In Florida. I have reasonable confidence that I’ll be back to wearing contacts eventually because I’ve been seeing such good progress on the allergy shots, but April 25^th is less than two months away, so it’s not a lot of time for my eyes to make more progress. I imagine I’ll be pulling out all the stops to make it through the weekend, especially since I probably won’t be getting a lot of sleep with all the stuff we need to do. And no matter what, my eyes will probably look a little red by the end of the night. Maybe our photographer can photoshop the whites of my eyes so that they actually look white. :)

In any case, the progress so far is real. I no longer look like a zombie after sleeping less than 8 hours, or after having a couple beers, or after a full day of work. My eyelashes no longer fall out in clumps, I no longer wake up with crusty eyelashes or eyelids swollen shut, and (best of all) people at work no longer ask me if I’ve been crying.