Conjunctivitis

[bobquasit]

Early yesterday morning Sebastian came into our room, crying. He told us his eye hurt, and he wanted to go to the doctor.

I turned on the light and took a look. What I saw made my heart sink. His right eye had a crust around the eyelid, a lot of greenish-yellow slime coming out of the tear-duct area, and it was clearly pink. I've never had conjunctivitis, and neither did anyone I knew while I was growing up, but I was pretty sure that I was looking at a case of it now.

I also knew that it was contagious as hell.

Later that day Teri took Sebastian to the doctor (I had to go to work), and got it confirmed: conjunctivitis. But to my surprise they didn't prescribe antibiotics (which was fine with me; I never push a doctor for antibiotics). Instead, they gave him some other sort of prescription eyedrops, and told Teri that he'd be able to go back to school in 24 hours.

And to my amazement, it looks like they were right! This morning the conjunctivitis had spread to his other eye (which was not at all surprising), but both eyes really looked fine - they weren't pink, and there wasn't much discharge. He's still mopey and uncomfortable, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was yesterday.

I wonder what was in those eyedrops?

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

It could be there were antibiotics in the drops as part of a mix (I know when I had my eye infections that the drops were primarily TobraDex).

Be careful with washing hands etc with an antibacterial soap after treating him to be safe so you don't come down with it.

[bobquasit.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at the ingredients, but Teri said that they specifically told her that they weren't prescribing antibiotics. I'll double-check that, though.

Not only are we all washing our hands, but we're also using plenty of hand sanitizer. Apparently households that use hand sanitizer frequently have a lower incidence of colds. So we have a large pump bottle of the stuff by the back door.