The Conjunctiva – More Than a Kid’s Eye Disease

A couple of weekends ago I learned where the yucky cruddy kiddy eye goo conjunctivitis gets its name from – the conjunctiva, part of the eye that until I injured it, I had known nothing about. Now, don’t call me dumb, I know my basic eye anatomy, the white part is the sclera, the colored part is the iris, the black part is the pupil, and we all want to keep the lens and the cornea in good working order. But somehow I missed the conjunctiva. Though after I had been through the mishap and then to the doctor and sent home with all the eye drops and instructions and looked it up, I was surprised to see the word conjunctiva actually there on the diagram of an eye staring at me on the computer screen. I had never noticed it before.

Well, let me tell you, when you injure it, it hurts, and then you know it’s there. And it can take quite some time to heal. Mine took a good three weeks. What, you may ask, does the conjunctiva do? Well, several things: it is a transparent mucous membrane which covers the sclera (that’s the white part of the eye), it also lines the inner surfaces of the eyelids, and it produces the tear film which keeps the eye lubricated, which is why when it gets infected or inflamed, the result is called conjunctivitis, or pink eye.

I was doing a very simple task; I was removing the back seat cushions in our SUV so that the seat backs could lay flat in order to load a large object into the rear of the vehicle. As with all family cars, ours is full of this and that and trash and not cleaned often enough. When I pulled on the latch to release the seat cushion, nothing happened and it was sunny outside and dark inside, so I removed my sunglasses to get a better look at what I was doing (note to self: never remove protective eye gear when moving stuff inside a messy car) and then I tried yanking on the latch again. At this point something sharp and small flew up and hit me in the outside corner of my left eye. Hard. I immediately had my hand to my eye and didn’t remove it for a good twenty seconds, when I did, I saw blood. FREAK OUT! Then I eased myself into the front seat and pulled down the visor to look in the vanity mirror. I removed my hand from my eye and slowly opened the lid and again saw blood. Once more - FREAK OUT! Since my daughter and I were at the local Re-Store picking up an item, I had to calmly walk back into the store and explain, with my hand covering my eye, that we would not be loading the item into the vehicle at that time, but would be heading to the nearest Urgent Care facility instead.

I drove, hand over my eye, to the nearest Urgent Care, sat for one and a half hours, only to be seen by a physician’s assistant who told me that my sight seemed fine, and indeed the injury was in the outer corner of the eye. It hurt like the devil, but I was able to focus for a vision test and there didn’t seem to be any swelling after they gave me an ice pack to keep on it for about thirty minutes. That, and some antibiotic drops, and I was sent home with the address of an eye clinic to present myself to the next day.

So, the following day I was seen by an eye professional who approved the antibiotic drops, did a very thorough eye exam, and added a corticosteroid drop and some liquid tears for soothing to the mix since the eye was quite sore at this point. There was indeed a laceration on the conjunctiva in the far left corner of the left eye. It was not necessary to keep it covered, just rest it when it was tired and stay away from too much reading or computer. He wanted to see me back in a week to make sure the injury was healing correctly. I went home and put in the drops four times a day as instructed and got on with things.

When I returned to the doctor a week later, however, the eye was not making the progress he had wished. It remained very red in the corner and I was still using the gel tears every night because the eye was very tired and painful in the evenings. He wanted to see me back in another week. Well it turned out that I returned to him in less than a week. In five days I was back in his chair, having spent a totally sleepless night prior, with the eye scratching me with every blink. This time, however, he was quite happy with how the original injury looked and said that the conjunctiva was finally healing the way it should. I had managed somehow, to form a cyst on the inside of the lid which, every time I blinked, was passing over the healing wound and aggravating it. This cyst would eventually resolve itself and all would be well. Until then, more drops!

So, a word to the wise, protect your eyes at all times when working in dusty, kid infested conditions, you never know what may pop up at you. And yes, conjunctivitis is not pleasant, but neither is what else can happen to that slender, invisible covering of the eye!