Double Vision Always Seems To Get The Best Of Me.

Well, it appears the saga of my cat-and-book-induced eye injury is not quite over, after all. As reported here earlier, the injury itself seemed to heal up nicely in a few days, but recently I've started noticing that when I look at a bright light against a dark background, I'm getting some mildly disturbing blurring effects, and, in certain circumstances, a sort of faint second image of the bright object, just with that one eye. So, like the conscientious patient I occasionally am, I went in to see the optometrist. He didn't confirm any of my paranoid hypochondriac worries, thank goodness. (Yes, I will admit that part of my brain kept going, "Aaargh, I'm developing a cataract! Maybe it's glaucoma! Help, my retina is detaching!") He said the cornea looks nice and healed up, but there is some "degradation in the epithelium" and that I am at risk for something called recurrent corneal erosion. Which means, basically, that your eyeball sticks to your eyelid, especially when you're asleep, and then when you open your eyes or blink, it tears a bit of the outer layer off. Ewww. It does seem to fit, though; I've actually noticed a bit of a "sticking eyelid" feeling lately. So he told me to use some over-the-counter eye lube stuff and call back in a week to let him know if it's any better. I'm really not looking forward to squirting gunk into my eye, but all in all it could have been a heck of a lot worse

One annoying thing, though, is that, because the guy is an optometrist and not an opthamologist (and therefore does not have an MD), I'm pretty sure my insurance won't cover the visits, even though they're injury-related. But it's totally not worth it to me to drive 80 miles into Albuquerque to find an opthamologist, when this guy is perfectly competent. And I'm quite sure he is competent for this kind of thing. The doctor at the emergency room even told me he frequently does followups on eye injuries and that he was someone I could see if I needed to.