A Little Wimpy, but More Like Popeye

Yesterday when I woke up my right lower eyelid was not only really crusty but also very sore to the touch. “That’s annoying,” I thought to myself as I went about my morning routine. Throughout the day that eyelid bothered me. It itched like crazy, but to even touch it lightly was to cause pain so I refrained, most of the time, from rubbing it. By yesterday evening when I looked at it in the mirror there was a definite red patch on the inside corner of the eyelid.

This morning when I woke up the eyelid felt even worse. “Yikes,” I thought to myself as I went about my morning routine. I asked N if it looked bad, and he said “Oh my gosh, Mom, that’s awful!” with eyes as big as saucers. Looking in the mirror for myself I could see that it wasn’t quite the tragedy one might have thought from N’s reaction, but the entire lower eyelid was swollen and puffy and the red place was just a bit smaller than a dime. I very tentatively reached up to touch it, felt the pain associated with it and decided to keep my hands off of it completely. In an apparent bid for equal attention, my left lower eyelid today has decided to develop a tic. So not only can people see the grotesqueness of the right lower eyelid, they can then turn their gaze to the quivering, jerking left lower eyelid for balance. Oh yeah. I’m quite the looker today.

In spite of feeling like a wimp because I was letting a little tiny spot on my eyelid make me grouchy and lethargic and not at all myself, I called the doctor’s office. My doctor had no appointments available today but another doctor in the practice did. Good enough! I needed immediate attention before this painful eyelid caused more than curmudgeonly behavior, a watery eye, and strange looks from those who saw me.

The doctor was wonderful. She looked at it closely, pushed on it (I know she had to do that, but OUCH), and declared that I apparently have a small cyst in there that has gotten infected. She prescribed antibiotics, warm moist compresses and warned me what symptoms should send me to an acute appointment with the eye doctor to whom she referred me for a routine appointment in about a month.

So apparently I won’t die from this or even lose the use of my right eye. That’s the good news. The bad news is I look a little like Popeye walking around with my right eye nearly closed. Maybe he had an infected cyst too. He should have seen his doctor.