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The Worst Birthday Present I’ve Ever Received: Pink Eye

As I look back on 2023, I can’t help but look back at something that happened at the beginning of the year that really had an effect on me. In April, I got my first eye infection ever. And as dramatic as this is going to sound, it was absolutely traumatic. The pink eye experience still effects me to this day.

A Fun Birthday Trip

Let me take you back to the beginning. This year, I wanted to do something special for my birthday. I decided that I wanted to take a trip and I eventually settled on Upstate New York. I booked the rooms and made an itinerary. I was really excited for this little weekend getaway.

The trip was awesome. We started the trip in the Catskills hiking to Kaaterskill Falls. Then, we made our way to Ithaca, New York. In Ithaca, we checked out a bunch of waterfalls and also saw one of the Finger Lakes! Anyone who knows me I’m happiest by waterfalls or really any body of water.

The Pink Eye

Things were great, until on the last day of the trip, I woke up and realized that I couldn’t open my eye. I’ll spare you the graphic details/pictures, but I essentially had to pry my eye open. I immediately woke up my boyfriend because I just had no idea what to do.

We looked into having me go to a walk-in, but because we were out of state, I decided not to. It wasn’t an emergency. So, we finished off the trip with some more waterfall adventures.

I then stubbornly drove the five hours back to Connecticut, despite my eye now being extremely uncomfortable at this point. When we were thirty minutes from home, I finally gave up and had my boyfriend drive. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Finally Dealing With It

When I got home, I went right to the walk-in clinic. The physician quite literally looked at my eyes and was like “yup, pink eye” and then prescribed me some eye drops. At this point it was only in one eye so I was supposed to just use them on that one eye.

The next day was my birthday. It had spread to both eyes. Happy birthday to me, right? What’s better than swollen eyes and discomfort? I woke up not being able to open either of my eyes. My boyfriend had to get me a wet washcloth to ease them open. What a way to start my 26th year of life.

Now you’d think the eye infection would go away pretty quickly, right? Wrong. It seemed never ending. I spent weeks waking up unable to open my eyes and needing my boyfriend to get me a washcloth to open my eyes. My eyes hurt so badly, I couldn’t look at screens. I had to blow through my PTO. I even had to cancel a trip with my family to the Jersey Shore. My family went, but I had to stay away because I still had pink eye.

I had so many doctors visits. I went to my primary care just as a follow up to check my eyes. She knew they were irritated, but she couldn’t say whether or not they were still infected so she had me go to an actual eye doctor.

Post Eye Infection

When I finally got in with a new eye doctor since my last one retired, the infection was confirmed gone, but I was still having a lot of issues with my eyes. He did a ton of tests on my eyes and I got them dilated for the first time (which was traumatic in itself). He told me I have dry eyes, but he seemed skeptical that it was from the eye infection (even though my eyes were not like this prior).

The discomfort and pain lasted for weeks, which turned into months. It was actually so bad that I started to have suicidal ideation (I actually found out that this is something other people experience, which you can read more about here). I didn’t want to live the rest of my life having eyes that were ruined from an eye infection. I honestly felt like my eyes would never be the same.

I couldn’t even watch TV with my boyfriend because it hurt my eyes that badly. I was constantly needing to use eye drops and using warm compresses on my eyes. I was waking up with my eyes so dry it was uncomfortable to open them and my vision was blurry. I couldn’t take it anymore, it was effecting my quality of life. I’m lucky that I have a boyfriend I was able to express all of this to who did not judge me for having those extreme thoughts.

What was worse was that my brother and sister-in-law had it a couple of weeks before I got it (I didn’t get it from them), yet they weren’t having any after effects from the infection. Even my boyfriend who ended up with it from me wasn’t dealing with the after effects. It was awful.

Present Day

I still deal with the physical effects, aka dry eyes. They’ve definitely gotten better, but I still wake up with them really dry, making my eyes uncomfortable to open and making my vision blurry in the morning. Looking at the computer screen to clock into work right after rolling out of bed is absolutely horrific and I usually do it with my eyes squinted mostly shut. Otherwise, it’s too intense.

But, here’s the thing. It also scarred me mentally. Getting pink eye is now one of my biggest fears. I’m petrified to touch my eyes now (I really wish this was an exaggeration). If I want to rub my eye, I HAVE to wash my hands or I won’t touch them, even if they’re so itchy that it’s uncomfortable. I also use tissues to rub them a lot because I still lowkey don’t trust my hands even after I’ve washed them.

If my eyes are even a little bit puffy, I begin to panic thinking it’s an eye infection. If my eyes are just a little too itchy, panic over potential eye infection. If my eyes are red from being dry, I still get paranoid it’s an eye infection.

In short, these are things I absolutely need to work through. It’s not as intense as when it first happened, but the fear is definitely still there.

Anyhoo, thanks for coming to my trauma dump about the eye infection that ruined a significant part of my year. Despite this, I really did manage to have a good year!

– Kailey