It's all in the eyes...

This week, I had the routine eye exam I'd been putting off for almost a year. All was going well until the doc said it looked like my right eye was a little dry but she wanted to look closer and make sure it wasn't a virus. She squirted some dye in there and took another look and said "well, it looks like a virus. It looks like the herpes virus."

Huh?!?

"Not that kind," she said quickly, waving her hand vaguely over her genital area.

I've had the cold sore strain of the Big H since I can remember, but this was a new one. It just sounds so gross~ I'm already not feeling my cutest~ my cheekbones have entirely disappeared, my stomach is getting larger by the minute, and my energy level on a lot of days is equivalent to one of those drugged polar bears at the Anchorage zoo. So now we're going to add "eye herpes" to the list? Which, my doc explained, meant I couldn't wear contacts for "at least weeks." Now, nothing against those who wear glasses, but I just don't like to wear them. It brings me back to what we refer to as "6th grade Lynn." 6th grade Lynn had very short hair and Tootsie glasses and was a bit of a chubster. And when I wear glasses, I feel kind of like there's a windshield between me and the rest of the world. And not in a good way.

So I came home to call Scott and my mom and tell them the good news. Now lest you think I've been putting unsavory things in my eye, ocular herpes are the same strain as the cold sore variety. Apparently the virus lies dormant in the nerves of one's face until something like undue stress brings it out of hibernation and it travels to yer eye. I figured that the compromised immune system that pregnancy brings (which is pretty brilliant as it ensures that the mother's body doesn't reject the fetus) had spawned this new treat. We had an appointment with the midwives that same afternoon, so I asked about the eyedrops my doc wanted to prescribe me, since they were of course a category C drug-- with unknown side effects on the fetus.

The next day I had to go back to my eye doctor. Much to my amazement, when she peered again into my infested right eye, she proclaimed that it was in fact dryness, and not the dreaded Eye Herpes. Never before had I thought to put "not having eye herpes" on my gratitude list, but there you go.