TMI

I'm gonna pretend that I'm an old person, or at least my mother, and give you too much information (TMI) about the latest ailment I've been dealing with. Actually, it's not even an ailment... it's been more of a "What the hell is that, and why won't it go away?" experience.

I may have mentioned in my Ketchup post that I had a small eye infection about a month n' a half ago. Anyway, when the antibiotics didn't completely dissolve the little bump within three days, I returned to the clinic as the doctor suggested. She examined it again and while she thought the infection looked better, she noticed that the little blister inside my eyelid was a bit blue, which means that it's over a vein - except she couldn't understand why that blue vein was there.

She asked if I had suffered a head injury recently. Nope. She suggested that perhaps it was a varicose vein and that I might've always had it. Either way, she didn't seem too worried, but she wanted to make an appointment with an eye specialist for me to get it checked out.

Even though I knew everything would likely be okay, getting a shrug and an "I don't know" from a doctor can be a tiny bit unsettling. I'd rather she had said, "It's nothing. Don't worry about it. It'll go away on it's own." I waited a week for her to make the appointment with the specialist. I thought of calling her office back about it, when finally I got the call. My appointment would be another three weeks away. Ugh.

I hoped the little blue blister would go away in that time. It doesn't hurt and it's really only noticeable when I pull back my eyelid, which isn't something people normally do. But still... Because I know it's there, I've found myself pulling my eyelid back far more than usual ~ apparently only to freak myself out about it. :P

Three weeks passed, and it didn't go away. My appointment was at 8:15 this morning, and so last night it was really on my mind. Throughout the evening, I kept giving Jim all these reasons why I might have this vein/bump. He was patient with me and my random optimistic hypotheses.

"Maybe it's always been there, like she said? I've never flipped my eyelid up to see it. It could be a result of my head injury when I was a kid? It was right over the same eye. That's probably what it's from! I heard the doctors say that the gash severed a nerve. Maybe the infection just displaced that nerve or vein, pushing it forward a bit? Maybe the impact made it into a varicose vein? Isn't it weird that I had 32 stitches in my head, and now maybe something from that accident has come back to haunt me as soon as I turn 32?!"

That last line gave me the willies, as my mind turned to dark thoughts of dormant blood clots. I always thought I had been lucky to have slept through that car accident - I hadn't felt a thing! (...until the stitches) - but maybe the car accident gets the last laugh!

Jim knocked some sense into me with his sweet kindness, assuring that I'd be fine and that he wanted to go with me... and then he told me to stop looking at it in the mirror and go to bed.

I awoke in much more confident spirits as we headed off to the specialist.

The doctor gave me the usual eye test. He informed me that I don't need glasses. He thinks the former eye clinic ripped me off because I have perfect 20/20 vision. (Although I will admit that the slight magnification and glare-blocking lens does take the headachy edge off when painting or staring at a computer for too long. But maybe some rest or a tylenol would've had the same effect? :P)

After the eye test, I told him that I actually wasn't there for glasses, but that I was supposed to see him about a vein in my eyelid.

He examined it carefully and gave me the exact response I was hoping for, "It's nothing to worry about. Just a little blister. It'll go away on it's own."

Annnnnd exhale!