Scleritis

(wub, perhaps stop reading now...)

I woke up in the middle of the night with my right eye hurting. So I did what you do when your eye hurts and squeezed it shut. The result: instant agony, so bad I was considering ringing NHS Direct in the middle of the night. But eventually it eased off and I went back to bed.

Then my alarm went off, I woke up, felt pain in my right eye and squeeze it shut, and exactly the same happens all over again.

The doctor says I've got scleritis with possible conjunctivitis; and that I should wash my eye four times a day in salt water, and it'll get better in two or three days (though she also gave me a prescription for antibiotics if it doesn't).

The funny thing is that as the doctor's poking around in my eye (and I'm huddling in a corner going "aaargh!" because someone's poking in my eye), she says "What are you worried about?" as if it's a strange thing to have pain in your eye and be worried. If I'd not gone to the doctor, how was I to know there wouldn't be permanent damage? *shrug* Go figure.

Then I get to work, and my cow-orker wants me to wear an eye-patch and talk like a pirate, just because. The "because" being as follows:

Image under Creative Commons licence; taken from FSM via Wikipedia.

"Hmm," observes my other cow-orker. "It's been rather cold the last few years, and what have you noticed happening off the coast of Somalia? Piracy!" :o)