Pink eyes II
Blog vol 3. 52. Pink eyes II
Last week, with pink eye happening in our house, I wrote about… pink eye! Not surprisingly, due to the contagiousness of the virus and the percentage of our household infected, it was also a prescient topic.
Prescient, according to the Cambridge Dictionary is “knowing or suggesting correctly what will happen in the future”. The future being Sunday morning when I woke up with, you guessed it, pink eye, first time ever. Should I let it resolve itself, taking up to eight days to blow over? Meanwhile, my already overloaded schedule gets even more backed up because I cannot expose my patients to this virus.
A while back I took continuing education courses with some doctors in the U.S. who were treating pink eye with Betadine. I also knew of an ophthalmologist, here in the GTA, who contracted pink eye and had done the Betadine treatment.
It really works, because Betadine (iodine) is the compound that we use to disinfect skin and tissues before surgery. It kills everything. Sunday night, I went to the pharmacy and loaded up with Betadine, anesthetic, steroids, non-steroids, and saline, and at 8:30 Monday morning, my colleagues at Burlington Eyecare gave me a Betadine treatment, at this point on both eyes as they were both clearly presenting full-blown pink eye.
It involves getting the Betadine on the eye and the surrounding tissues, like the lids for 60 seconds. No big deal because I was anesthetized, so my world turned yellowish brown as the sterilizer washed over my eyes. I did mention that it kills everything… so gone were the nasty adenoviruses but also gone were my epithelial cells on all the tissue that was washed. After 60 seconds, profuse irrigation with sterile saline.
There is a saying out there (you do not do this to any animal/creature, let alone a cat), that you don’t know what it is like to swing a cat by its tail until you actually have swung a cat by its tail. I can also tell you that the anesthetic lasted exactly 15 minutes because that is when the pain and tearing began and continued for the next hour and a half (seemed like longer). More irrigation with cold drops, and then again more still, lots of cold compresses, some drops of non-steroidal meds, more cold, more irrigation, and an Advil for the pain.
I then lay down with the changing out of cold compresses and the start of steroidal drops and slept, miraculously. Woke at lunch, still irritated and with blurry vision, which with further drops of steroid and lubrication subsided as the day waned.
I am all better now: no more pink eye, no longer contagious. I was able to work the next day, but I wonder about the wisdom of Betadine. It really works but boy oh boy what a miserable affair. My recommendation, unless you really have to, I would stay away. I would also recommend a lot more irrigation to wash out the iodine (Betadine), even going so far as to use a Morgan lens that is used in emergency for chemical burns with a LOT of saline, I mean a LOT, a LOT.
I learned from this whole experience that whatever chemical, etc. that is in the eye, you need to over-the-top irrigate. You do not want to leave a single molecule in there, let alone two… I shudder at the thought.
Instead, pink eye only lasts for so long, put up your feet, read a book, wait for it to go away.
‘til next week,
the good doctor
