Allergies and the Band

I'm still figuring all this out.

For the past few days, my band has been extremely tight. I mentally reviewed all the usual causes: Stress? not really. Pollen allergies? no; in fact, my allergic rhinitis has been better recently. And so on.

This morning when I woke up, my right eye was very irritated, and it got much worse as the day went on despite frequent application of eye drops. I looked at it in the mirror several times, wondering if the corneal cyst I had removed a few years ago had returned, but I couldn't see anything. No cyst, no eyelash, no foreign object. I hadn't worn eye makeup for several days. By 1:30 pm, the irritation was so bad I wanted to pull out my eyeball. It felt as if someone had scored my eye with a razor, then sandpapered it. I called my eye doctor and got a recording. Finally I called my husband's eye doctor and was told to come right over. This doctor (with the unfortunate name of Bugg) carefully checked my eye, found no foreign object, no injury, no infection, but some scarring of my conjunctiva, probably due to allergies. He prescribed Prednisone drops and cold compresses, gave me a bottle of lubricating eye drops and told me to come back if it wasn't better by Monday.

On my way home (3:45 pm by then, after waiting for the prescription to be filled) I was miserable. My eye was so painful I could hardly see to drive and my band was so tight I could barely drink water. Then I passed a blooming tree that my husband and I call Mimosa (we have no idea if it's really Mimosa) that gives us both allergic misery every year, and suddenly it all clicked: the eye irritation, the tight band, the Mimosa pollen. No wonder! Physically I don't feel any better - I still want to pull out my eyeball, and could barely eat 3 bites of tofu for supper - but mentally I don't feel as confounded and defeated.