pink attack

I like pink. I know I've shocked most of you right there, but it's true. I like pink -- pink tops, pink pants, pink thongs of the Australian variety, pink thongs of the American variety, pink blankets, pink phones, pink flowers, pink artwork, pink beach towels, pink watermelon and pink ice cream. The one pink thing I don't like is pink eye.

In and of itself, there are far worse illnesses. Headaches, stomachaches and earaches are all far, far worse. Even upper respiratory tract infections, as I learned last year, have the potential to wreak lots more havoc, and it's definitely trumped by sore throats, cramps and colds.

Perhaps that's why, then, I didn't realize what I had at first. It came about when my brother was visiting, and I was pretty sure my contacts were just a wee bit drier than usual when they woke me up about 6 am. (6 am, I should point out, is not a time I like to be woken up by anything. Please do not try it.) When drops didn't do the trick, I staggered to the bathroom, removed them and tried to go back to bed. Unfortunately, it hurt to close my eyes.

Oddly enough, it also hurt to have them open. But, seeing as it was still only 6:06 am, I was sleepy enough to suck it up and snoozed off, until my eyes woke me up again at 7 am. (7 am, I should also point out, is another time I do not like to be woken up by anything. Please do not try it either.) I'm not usually one to give up on sleep, but at this point it proved impossible. Fortunately, Andrew's jet lag was such that he was also waking up earlier than he ever normally would (being a college student, 7 am was much closer to his normal bedtime) so we set off.

It didn't take me long to notice that, no matter what I did regarding drops or glasses, my left eye was still quite itchy. Call me crazy (as it seems many are wont to do, regardless of circumstances), but it itched worse when I looked up at anything, or rode buses. I have no idea why.

For the rest of the day I figured it was an odd, one-off thing and that surely any second now it would stop itching. And sometimes it did. Generally just long enough for me to think all was well again.

Imagine then my dismay when the very next morning I received another 6 am wake-up call. This time there was no mucking about with drops first -- I ran straight to the bathroom to rip out the -- oh. I'd never put them back in. This was odd. This was seriously strange. My eyes did not have contacts in them; why then were they unhappy? Puzzled, I drizzled drops in them anyway (force of habit they'd acquired?) and dozed off again until 7.

Day two of the itchy eyes led to more open complaint. Various friends suggested various possibilities; one gave me some eye drops, other were sure it was hay fever. Having never developed hay fever before, I remained doubtful. It wasn't until my flatmate suggested pink eye that the penny dropped.

It was still Sunday at this point, but the next day I had to take Andrew to the airport at some extremely unearthly hour of the morning (it was before 6 am). I don't know how many of you have had to say goodbye to a brother at 7 am on a Monday morning with pink eye when he's flying to the other side of the world and you suddenly realize you're absolutely alone in Australia with no family of any kind anywhere closer than California, but it's not a particularly pleasant experience. Which was how, early Monday morning, I found myself standing in the Wynyard chemist's bawling my eyes out and trying to explain that, yes, I really had pink eye, and no, it wasn't because I was crying, and what I really needed to know was whether to go to a doctor's or an optometrist's. The girl recommended the doctor's, but looked like she thought a psychiatrist might be more to the point. I blew my nose and left.

Fortunately, commuting to the CBD means that I do have good, rapid access to medical professionals. I found a doctor's office across the street and made an appointment for 45 minutes later. Fortunately, commuting to the CBD means that I also have good, rapid access to chocolate cupcakes. I found a cupcake shop two shops down and made an appointment, effective immediately, during which I managed to finish three chocolate cupcakes and more or less stop crying. Then I hiked the two shops' length back to the doctor.

The doctor quickly confirmed that I wasn't pregnant, a smoker, an alcoholic, a drug dealer or a prostitute, recommended a vaccine for cervical cancer (or would that be against?), and informed me that, yes, I had pink eye. Though to be precise, at this point it was probably closer to salmon eye, after the yellow drops she'd drenched it in.

Doctored up, I rose from the examining table (why I had to lay down is another mystery) and marched back to the chemist's, this time with prescription in hand to prove I had a genuine malady. The girls eyed me suspiciously, but the pharmacist, who I hadn't met on my last trip in, was kindly and offered a long series of recommendations regarding the application of the drug, the only one of which really sunk in was the idea that it ought to live in the refrigerator as much as possible.

I paid the pharmacist, and off I trotted to run errands at the bank, the travel agency and a coffeeshop (one always needs to fall back and regroup after such mornings; honestly, an extra two or three coffeeshops stops wouldn't have hurt) before making it to work by noon. There I promptly deposited my eye drops in the fridge, and wrote myself a note I hoped no one happened to read and take the wrong way, seeing as it ran something to the effect of: "KIM! don't forget (insert picture of eyeball here) in fridge!!!"

My work colleagues, incidentally, are used to me having trouble with my eyes; I seem to have regular difficulties with styes. The upshot of this is that I now know how to treat them all by myself (lots of heated pressure; 15 minutes 4 times a day, ideally, to nip one in the bud); the downside is that that means I often apply just-boiled teabags to my eyes during every possible break at work. So even if they noticed the note, perhaps they wouldn't think too much of it.

Over the next week and a half, I continued to apply my eye drops regularly, and refrigerate them in the meantimes, and thankfully my eye stopped itching almost immediately, and looked significantly better soon after, too. All was finally well and white, though I bided my time until several days after the symptoms cleared up to risk the contacts again.

I'd thrown out my mascara, but left my drops stashed in the back of the fridge, just in case.

And just in case turned out to be one the smartest moments of my life, if by smartest you mean "saved me $70."

Because what to my wondering right eye should appear, the very next week, but red lines all in there! This time my left eye was fine, but there was no doubt about it; the right had (despite having received just as many medicated drops as the left) taken it upon itself to keep things nice and even and therefore developed its own special case of pink eye.

This time I was more frustrated than anything, but I started my day at work by calling a pharmacist.

"Hi there, um, I just had pink e--er, conjunctivitis, and I'm was on this medicine, ciph-er-a-"

"Ciprofloxacin, yes."

"Yes! And I used it and it worked, but it was like, well, I started it August 31, and now I've come down with pink e--er, conjunctivitis in the other eye, but I've had it in the fridge the whole time, do you think I can still use it again now?"

"Yes, it should be fine. Ciprofloxacin is good for a month, so you've got until September 30. I'd throw it away after that, though."

"Oh, perfect, thanks so much!"

And thus a man I'd never even met made my day at 8:25 in the morning.

And this time, when the drops were over, and the itching gone, and the pink lines vanished, I scoured my place. I washed every piece of cloth I could find, cleaned the bathroom sink twice, threw out all the contact cases I could find (oddly enough, when I went back to the chemist's to buy a new one, they didn't have any for sale. "Oh, here," the one girl said to the other, "this is a sample one. Just let her have it."), pitched another mascara and all my eyeshadow and suddenly began having nightmares about The Velveteen Rabbit.

Like I said, there are far worse illnesses you could have from a purely medical point of view. But anything that racks up $100 in one go-round (thanks again to the nameless pharmacist for saving me a substantial part off the second) and even contemplates messing with my stuffed animal is nothing to be trifled with.

I am happy to report, though, that I am now entirely back in the pink of health.