The Sad But True Story About My Eyes

Many of you may have noticed that in the past few months I have been wearing my glasses a lot more than I normally do. I have had a reason.

Last July, when my baby was 2 months old, I noticed that I had a case of red eyes after a weekend at the beach. At first, I passed it off as irritation from the sand or salt water, but it did not go away, in fact, it got worse. So, I went to the doctor, claiming that I thought it was pink eye(the only reason I could think of why my eyes would be red). The doctor told me that it was allergies and gave me some eye drops and eye cream to put on at night. I left satisfied and thought after 2 weeks of wearing glasses and using this treatment, I would be cured. I was wrong.

The red eye did not go away, so I went to the eye doctor to see if they had any insight because it was clearly not allergies. The eye doctor told me it was an infection and told me to use natural tears until it cleared up. She would not use any "high-powered" eye drops because I was still nursing. She also advised me not to wear my contacts for a few more weeks. It seemed to get better for awhile, but then I relapsed again.

I went to Texas in October to visit my family. Desperate to clear this up, I went to my old eye doctor. Surely he could fix the problem. He told me it was a severe case of dry eye and gave me some drops to knock out the problem. Again, advising me to not wear my contacts. So, I sucked it up, kept wearing my glasses, and faithfully used my eye drops. This time, I was successful! It went away for over a month, but then I relapsed.

I spent our entire Christmas vacation in glasses. I felt defeated and accepted that I would just have to wear my glasses until I quit nursing so I could finally use some "high-powered stuff" to knock the problem out for good.

When we returned from our trip, I decided to try my contacts one more time, but this time I noticed something, something I never thought to check before. You see, my husband used to wear contacts as well, but he had eye surgery last summer. He was always the one who would buy our contact solution, so I never thought to check the bottle. If only I had checked the bottle! The bottle of saline solution I was using expired in March 2008. I guess come July it was pretty much useless. No wonder my eyes were red, itchy, light-sensitive disasters! I was not ever really cleaning them.

I went out last week and bought a new bottle of saline solution. I have not had a problem with my eyes since that day, and I have been wearing my contacts everyday. So I guess the moral of the story is to check your expiration dates, they really do mean that the product is useless.