That’s right, acne in my eye. Not actually ON my eyeball, but I had whiteheads on my eyelids, discharge and pus coming out of my eyes. Whenever I woke up in the morning, my eyelids were stuck together, and it tugged at my eyelashes.
Let me continue painting you this picture. My eyelids were swollen, inflamed, dry and itchy. It was the equivalent of acne that happens on your face, but it was going on in my eyes. There would be sometimes hours where I felt like there was sand in my eyes.
The irritation was maddening. MADDENING. This went on for WEEKS.
I almost lost it a few times guys, not gonna lie.
Had to summon a lot of willpower to keep from tearing my eyes and hair out.
It was sick, folks. I’m going on week 6, finally getting back to “normal.” Never thought it would come to this … but it happened.
However, NOT in the way you would think. So do yourself a favor and read this entire post through, it might save you from the nightmare that I went through.
Seriously … it was one of the most “unpleasant” experiences I’ve ever been through.
Let me rewind on how this “perfect storm” of acne in the eye happened.
6 Weeks Ago …
Went to a friend’s wedding and there was an open bar. Some of my old classmates from junior high and high school were there. We had a blast! I didn’t drink too much more than I normally do, but I did do something different: I drank dark liquor.
I normally drink clear liquor.
Johnny Walk Black and Scotch. I stuck to some slightly higher quality drinks all night.
But for some reason, by the time we left, I blacked out. Felt extremely sick, and threw up all night.
Woke up with a hangover.
We were in Napa Valley though, and being that I was with my friends, I went out a little bit. Didn’t drink anymore because I felt sick but had a little bit to eat with what appetite I had.
My immune system was down because of the hangover and somehow, I caught a cold.
I was extremely tired but drove the 6 hours back to Los Angeles because it was Sunday and I had to get back in time for work on Monday morning.
Thursday came along, and I was a little tired during a work conference. Took a short nap and woke up, walked into the bathroom, and there was an odd red bump on the right side of my right my eye only. Looked like this.
Notice the veins stemming from the little clear bubble next to my iris. Didn’t feel too much of anything, but looked kind of creepy.
I had never had something like this happen to me and it was a little concerning. The woman that I was dating did some research and we thought it might be pinguecula.
This was definitely not good because pinguecula is permanent and usually doesn’t go away. So you can imagine my relief when I went to go see an optometrist and he confirmed that it wasn’t pinguecula.
Whew! Thank God.
It was just keratoconjunctivitis, which is just inflammation of the cornea and conjunctiva. A little antibiotics and steroids will clear up the bacteria and accelerate healing. He told me I would be pretty much back to normally in a week or two.
BOY, WAS THAT WRONG.
Needless to say, I was super happy that I didn’t have a permanent mark on my eye with that little clear dot next to my iris in my eye.
I normally am against antibiotics. However, I believe that in certain situations they can really help, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to use them long term because they can really screw with your immune system and the probiotics living in your body.
This was one of those cases that I thought would be the exception. So I went to the pharmacy, picked up my medicated eyedrops and started using them as instructed by the optometrist.
Around Day 4 or 5, my eyes started burning whenever I used the eyedrops. I thought that was abnormal so I stopped using them.
I went back to see the same optometrist and told him what had happened. He said, “Good. You were probably allergic to the steroids, I’m glad you stopped using them.”
By this point, my eyeballs, eyelids and the area around my eyes were generally very dried out.
Then he gave me these eye drops to keep my eyes hydrated, told me use them regularly, and that they had no steroids or preservatives.
Great! We’re going organic and as natural as possible. This is totally up my alley. He confirmed that the majority of the keratoconjunctivitis had cleared up so I just needed to get my eyes back to normal from the allergic reaction of the steroids.
He told me I was almost healed.
BOY, WAS THAT WRONG.
Went back home, used the eye drops whenever my eyes were irritated and itchy. And it felt good. The eyedrops really hydrated and soothed my eyes.
Only one problem, by Day 4 or 5 of using these eye drops, I felt more burning.
Did some more research and confirmed with a pharmacist that the eye drops he had given me had steroids. WTF?! I thought we had agreed no more steroids!
Is this man trying to kill me?!
I stopped using the eye drops immediately. By this point, my eyes were really dry, irritating and itchy.
I tried not to rub my eyes, but there were times I just gave in. I tried to use the back of my hand, use clean tissues, and keep my hands clean.
Another week passed, and one day, I woke up my and my eyes were bloodshot red.
Went to work and the sand in my eye was so bad I could hardly even see. I had to leave work.
I wasn’t going back to that same optometrist, he had already caused enough misery in my life. So I went to see another optometrist.
Turns out, both of my eyes had become infected.
The “sand” in my eye was killing me, but no amount of rinsing, rubbing, dabbing with a tissue was helping. It was just making it worse.
I left in the middle of work and somehow made it to the new optometrist’s office.
She took a look at me and confirmed I now I had acute bacterial conjunctivitis.
She normally would prescribe an antibiotic and steroid combination eye drop, but I told her I’m allergic to steroids. So we just went with the antibiotic eye drops.
The next 4 weeks were miserable.
I didn’t take any pictures, but I can tell you that every day, my eyes were red, itchy, dry and hurt.
Rubbing my eyes made the itchiness worse. Every morning there was tons of discharge and pus coming out of my eyes. I’d wake up and my eyelids were stuck together there was so much gunk.
But worse, the sand in my eyes would come and sometimes stay for HOURS! I couldn’t get it out.
No amount of washing or rinsing my eyes with water or saline eyewash would help. I couldn’t use steroids to speed the healing because I was allergic. So all I had was an ice pack on both eyes.
I couldn’t do anything. I laid in my bed for weeks with an ice pack on my face listening to audiobooks and podcasts.
The irritation and pain in my eyes were maddening.
It was hard to sleep because of how uncomfortable my eyes felt.
There were times the area around my eyes and my eyes themselves felt on FIRE.
I tried using coconut oil, aloe vera, castor oil but these all either were short term solutions or made things worse.
I couldn’t tell anymore because it would get in my eye and it would burn or there was so much irritation that I just didn’t know anymore.
Once in a while, I would pop into a Benadryl or antihistamine but I tried not to use them too much because I didn’t want to become pill dependent and I’d rather just use some of my sick days at work and let my body heal naturally. I was trying to avoid any more man-made medication that got things to this degree of crap in the first place.
The only thing that felt good consistently was the ice pack.
If I took the ice pack away from my eyes, I had about 5 minutes before my eyes starting itching furiously.
Day after day, night after night, this went on. Weeks went by.
My eyelids had been so dried and dabbed with tissues that the skin was already torn away. This, of course, made things worse.
I was so uncomfortable that often times, I was just eating whatever I could find in the kitchen to satiate my hunger so I could return back to bed and throw the ice pack back on my eyes.
About a week ago, one night, I was in the bathroom inspecting my eyes and found whiteheads, equivalent to what some people get on their cheeks or foreheads, I found it on the very edge of my eyelids. They were right next to my eyes and when I would look left and right, I could feel the bumps.
It was gross. Acne in my eyes.
But I knew it was a good sign, it meant that my body was close to finishing fighting the infection and the dead white blood cells were being filtered out of the body.
They were coming out in whatever way my body could get them out, even if it meant through a whitehead on my eyelid.
Obviously, I wasn’t going out and doing anything. I’ve barely been on the computer doing any work.
Eventually, going on week 6, I’m now 85% healed and can sit at a computer for longer than 30 minutes to type out an article. However, even now, my eyes still itch out of nowhere every so often.
SO WHAT HAPPENED?
It was the perfect storm.
Hangover. Lowered immune system. Sick. Stress. Bacteria. Diet. Eye slightly infected. Optometrist. Steroids. Allergic reaction. More steroids. Worse allergic reaction. Natural healing and detox.
Let’s talk about how things could’ve gone differently …
– If I didn’t drink, I wouldn’t have gotten the hangover which led to getting sick, which led to etc…
– If I didn’t use the steroids and just let things heal naturally, maybe things wouldn’t have progressed to this degree of craziness.
– If I wasn’t eating large amounts of protein and carbs to gain mass and build muscle, maybe my body at this time wouldn’t have been so prone to infection.
– If I wasn’t 30 years old and instead was 18, maybe my body would’ve healed faster. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t have healed as quickly because my body was still pretty acidic at the time. And then again, maybe my 18-year-old self would’ve had a stronger immune system to fight off the initial infections.
WHAT DID I LEARN
#1.) My Eyes
All in all, I can’t believe how much we take our eyes for granted. Just waking up in the morning with less gunk in my eyes and my eyelids not glued together out of disgusting, I am grateful.
Just being able to talk to people without worrying about the burning around my eyes, it’s really a gift. As I laid in bed icing my eyes, I was reminded of just how much we take for granted our lives.
And though I like a nice little reminder every now and then of how amazing life is, I think this one took it overboard. None the less, I’m so happy I can blink without pain.
#2.) My Diet
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been trying to bulk and that it ended up with acne in my eyes. I think the diet influenced my level of acidity which influenced my immune system and resistance to bacteria which influenced all this jazz from happening.
That being said, I wonder why the steroids affected me the way they did. I normally don’t take medication and the times that I have, even the littlest doses hit me hard because my body is so sensitive or “clean.”
I do think that when you get lazy, comfortable, fall into a routine, or even just older, you need to be more careful with your diet.
In the end, diet is still king and I believe even more than you can completely cure and avoid acne whether on your skin or in your eyes with the right diet.
The diet I’ve been trying recently is probably not as healthy as the diet that I had before in fighting acne, but I’ve also been able to gain about 10 pounds of muscle. But I know exactly what I need to do in order to balance it so that I can still maintain fitness while being acne free.
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