Eye infection

ahelg

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This morning I woke up with a very strange feeling in my eye. I went to the mirror and found that the left part of my eye was swollen and red. I later found out that I have an infection and so I have to use eye drops every 2 hours and apply cream to my eye every night. This does, in short, mean that I've had to change to a different eye when I photograph. I have to say that it feels really strange to use the other eye for photography. Lets hope this doesn't last long.
 
So do I. I'm going to Spain on Wednesday and I want to take lots of pictures, but I won't be doing many if my eye is anything like this.
 
I had something similar happen to me while on vacation in Maine. Suddenly my shooting eye started really hurting and tearing over, especially every time I blinked. Went to the ER after a day (because there isn't anywhere else to go, really, when you're in a strange place) -- they gave me infection drops. Fastfoward to a few days later when I'm back home from vacation. I'm starting to see halos around stuff. So, I call an opthamologist, who schedules me in the next day. Turns out it was a fleck of rusty metal! How the hell that got in my eye is anyone's guess. He had to cut the damned thing out with a scalpel. Nothing more fun than having the doc tell you "whatever you do, don't move your eye" as he slowly approaches it with the world's sharpest-looking exacto knife.
 
I have had Conjunctivitis, and two separate pieces of metal in my eye before. I now have a permanent spot in my field of view where one on the pieces of metal was lodged in my cornea. $1500 for that!

I have long ago learned to use both eyes. Sort of optical ambidexterity. Because I also target shoot, I have learned to shoot with out a dominate eye. I fully sympathize with such a situation, been there done that.

Ahelg, I truly do wish your eye and you the best in this. I know the pain, and the end result of having something like this happen....
 
Must feel really akward using the other eye I take it.
 
Yesterday I had to apply cream to my eye. All I could see was a big white wall covering my eye. This morning I feel pretty good. It's still a bit swolen but not much. I expect it will have gone over in a couple of days at this pace.
 
Unless you use eyeglasses (like I do) take care to keep the eyecup on the viewfinder very clean. Always good advice, but especially if you're using your good eye to shoot for awhile. Don't want no germ transference to your good eye. I always carry a packet of handiwipes with me to keep the eyecup clean. There's a lot of dusty, dirty wind out there.
 
If you have glasses, obviously you can keep shooting like normal. If you don't, I reccomend regularly disinfecting the viewfinder and NOT using the other eye under any circumstances unless you want to get it infected as well. Here's hoping for a speed recovery.
 

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