“But Pink is *So* Not My Color!”

Shortly after leaving for Portland almost two weeks ago, my left eye turned slightly pink. "Allergies," I kept telling myself, though I've never had allergies. Hey, it could happen! The eye gradually turned more and more pink over the following nine or ten days, and the right eye started showing a little color, too. No irritation, no discharge, just bright, pretty colors. (Though Laruen looks better in pink than I do.)

Thursday, on the long ride with lots of sweat running into my eyes, there were a couple twinges. I ignored them.

Saturday it hurt. I left the contacts out as much as I could. I hate wearing glasses, but it's marginally better than actually going permanently blind. (That's a guess, since I've never actually been blind, but it seems logical.)

Sunday it hurt a bit more, but it stopped hurting when I was doing something physical like thowing a frisbee for hours with Bill Ellison (again). When we came home, it felt like acid was dripping into it every few seconds. Acid in, tears out. (Not as in "boo hoo," but as in, "Hey look, my eye is leaking.") So i went to the doctor, who put in a drop of something to numb it and immediatly had a new best friend!

So no, it's not an allergy as I wanted to believe. He diagnosed it as bacterial conjunctivitis, which is generally caused by either staph or strep bacteria. He gave me some antibiotic eye drops, and sent me on my way.

Three hours later, the numbing drops wore off... but by Monday afternoon, all of the pain was gone because the home team had finally started to beat back the invading horde. So I did what anyone would do: I popped in my contacts and went for a long bike ride! After all, I have to stay in shape if I'm going to win this war, right?