Eyeball

If the title alone made you uncomfortable then I suggest you avoid this post altogether.  My whole life I have suffered from watery eyes.  Several times a year when I was either sick with a cold or allergies my eyes would water so badly and continually that I couldn't see.  When I was a child it was annoying to have classmates assume that I was always crying and now that I am an adult it keeps me from driving, cooking, and taking care of my kids.  Medicine never seemed to help.  Cold and allergy medicine would take away my other symptoms but nothing touched my eyes.  And it always bugged me that none of the symptoms listed in the commercials talked about watery eyes.  This past month I learned why.... I don't have watery eyes, I have dry eyes.  My eyes get so dry that they over produce tears.  Yeah that doesn't makes sense to me either, but that's the truth.  I discovered this recently by going to the eye doctor.  I never really thought of going to the doctor about this before because I always assumed there was noting that could be done.  I only ever went to walmart to get my eyes checked cause I am cheap like that so I've never had a real specialist look at my eyes. 
This latest round started the same way, at Sam's Club.  The guy looked at my eyes and suggested I try contacts again since my prescription had changed.  They were better this time, but my eyes were still dry after 30 minuets.  So I went back and the guy was being very weird saying that there was nothing he could do about it and that I should just give up.  Since I was already going to buy glasses at this clinic down the street that my neighbor works at; I decided to meet with the specialist there about contacts.  The doctor looked at my eyes and listened to my history.  He said I was a classic case of dry eyes.  He gave me some different contacts to try and sent me to come back a week later for a follow up.  These contacts weren't much of an improvement.  I went back and looking at my eyes again saw that the ducts were all gunked up.  I wasn't producing many tears to begin with.

 *WARNING STOP HERE IF SQUEAMISH*  The only thing to do was scrape the gunk out.  Yup he scraped my eyeballs.  I thought running a half marathon made me pretty bad-ass, but that was nothing to sitting through 30+ minuets of eyeball scraping. And yes, it was as bad as it sounds. 

*SAFE TO CONTINUE*  A week later and not much change.  I still have dry eyes, so yesterday we switched to a different brand.  We can try dailies next and if none of that works then I get to have my tear duct drains plugged.  Seriously.  But despite all the pain, headaches, and dry eyes, I am encouraged to maybe solve a problem that has bothered me my whole life.