STS-125 launched this afternoon on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and I missed it. I missed my first launch in many, many missions, and all because of my stupid, stupid eyeball.
See, about a week and a half ago, as we drove back to work from lunch one day, my right eye started stinging and watering. This kept up at a very low level for more than a week. I changed my contact in hopes that would help, but it continued to come and go. But then on Saturday things got really bad, and the stinging and watering was constant. Then yesterday morning I found an eyelash! I took it out, and things improved drastically. I thought all was right with the world again.
This morning I got up and puttered around for a few hours, since I’m working the afternoon and evening shift for STS-125 this week. Around 11:20 I walked outside to head to work, and in the sunlight my eye exploded into a stinging, watery mess again. AGAIN.
And my wedding is in TWO WEEKS.
Enough is enough, so I immediately called the eye doctor, who fit me in at 12:15. He looked it over, asked if I’d been sick recently (why yes, I was sick with a sore throat, runny nose, and congestion just last week) and quickly said “looks like viral conjunctivitis.”
Say what? Conjunctivitis? But that’s pink eye. And I have had pink eye exactly once, when I was a kid, and it involved all sorts of nastiness and gunk oozing out of my eye and sealing it shut each night.
Ah, he says, but that is bacterial conjunctivitis. Viral conjunctivitis is different, involves watering and redness and irritation but no oozing, and is most often associated with a respiratory infection, a cold, or sore throat. Just like I had last week. Lovely.
The good news is that it runs it’s course in 1-2 weeks, and since it’s been an on-and-off issue for a week and a half now, I’m on the back side. And at this point, it sounds like I should just be happy that I didn’t spread it to my left eye too. He gave me some medicated eye drops to help with the irritation and slight swelling (the latter of which is apparently the cause of light sensitivity) and said it should clear up in a couple days.
Because I do NOT want to have to wear my glasses at my wedding. And in the meantime, it is SERIOUSLY ANNOYING to have only one good eye.
Other than my eye issues, the weekend was nice. On Saturday we took a group of 10 people in 5 airplanes and flew down to Angleton for a $100 hamburger (so named because of the price of the plane rental and fuel) at the Windsock Grill, which is at the Brazoria County Airport. It was all of a 25 minute flight. Jose and I flew in his instructor’s Cessna 150, the little yellow plane we hadn’t flown for many months. I’d forgotten how tiny it is, but we squeezed in and enjoyed the trip. Jen and Nujoud took another 150, which was hilarious because in a way, they were carrying FIVE people in a 2-seat plane. See, Nujoud is about 3 months pregnant. And Jen is about 7 weeks pregnant. And Jen had just learned on Friday that she and Gavin are having TWINS this time. (I guess that technically means we had a group of 13 people in 5 planes, eh?) Flying into an airport, taxiing into an airplane parking lot, hopping out, and walking across the ramp to a restaurant is pretty cool overall. It was a fun adventure.
Windsock Grill (Jen and Nujoud flew in the red plane on the left)
Jose pre-flighting the little yellow plane before leaving Brazoria
Jason and Becca prepping their Warrior for the return trip
Yesterday we checked out our house again and were very happy to see that many of our issues have now been addressed. They have a couple more fixes to make today and tomorrow, but barring something unforeseen, sheetrock will start sometime late this week! Awesomeness.
