Aye, my eye!!!

Happy times in the old Spider household. I was just minding my business last night, dozing on the sofa and reading my library book when I chanced to rub my eye and FFFFFTTTTT! Just like that it went up in flames and swelled shut within a few minutes.

Now the whole itchy eye swelling shut thing is a normal sort of thing that happens when I am exposed to animal dander. If I visit your house and you have a pet or I stand next to you in a lift and you have pet hair on your clothes that is a likely reaction. But reading a library book???????????? The only thing we could figure is that maybe the person who had the book before me had pets. I mean once someone handed me a DVD from their pet filled house and my hand went up in immediate hives so anything is possible.

This morning I was greeted by my eye still swollen shut and stuck together with some sort of oozy, crusty glue. Spiderman swears he had no part in this (I checked for bottles of Elmers just lying around) but it took a wet cloth to open up my now bloodshot eye. Joy.

After several minutes with a hot compress I was able to open it and let me tell you I looked rough. Like the unfortunate love child of bug eyed comedian Marty Feldman and the Elephant Man. After some cold compresses of spoon from the fridge I managed to get the swelling down to an acceptable level—now I just looked like I had been punched in the eye.

I dragged my poor self to the chemist to speak to the pharmacist who said that the crusty oozy muck was a sure sign of Conjunctivitis.  Conjunctivitis is inflammation (swelling) of the conjunctiva. The conjunctiva is the transparent membrane (thin layer of cells) that covers the white part of the eyeball and the inner surfaces of the eyelid s (according to NHS online)  Double joy.

I was given a tube of ointment to put IN MY EYE 4 times a day. For the next 5 days. You have squirt it in, close your eye, roll your eye ball around and then open to a weird blurry film over your eye. Good times. But having squidged one dose in my eye it already feels better.

So I am bravely trying to make it through. I shall soldier on.

On a completely unrelated note I have had a massive craving for a grilled cheese sandwich. So we bought some ciabatta bread (which we call Chewbacca bread) and I made a batch of Cashew vegveeta from Dreena Burton’s cookbook and blog  

http://viveleveganrecipes.blogspot.com/2009/03/vegveeta-cheese-dip.html  which we plan on spreading on crusty bread and toasting up in our panini maker for lunch. So it’s not all bad.