Tears

Last week, well, I think it was last week - the days tend to blur together lately, flowing by faster than I can catch them.

Anyway, last week, I had an idiopathic allergic reaction. Which is a fancy way of saying I turned bright red, and got really itchy and we have no idea why. Which is even more fun because it was the second time in a week that had happened. The first time was during my bone scan. I figured I was having a reaction to the tracer they injected me with, but the doctors running the test assured me that wasn't at all the case.

Still. I was red and itchy and came home, took benadryl and basically passed out.

So when it happened again, just a few days later, I was pissed. I mean totally and completely pissed off. I mean, really body, don't we have enough stuff going on, do we really need to add totally and completely random allergic reactions to the mix?

Which led me to feeling frustrated. And tired (these reactions always make me feel. so. extremely. tired.) Which meant that before too long I was just so sad. And I just cried.

I cried. Actual tears. That ran down my face.

I know. This might sound a bit crazy at this point. You might be thinking something like "uh, yeah, crying and tears. They kind of go together crazy lady!"

Except I can't remember the last time I had tears. Real, actual tears. And you know what? It's really strange to cry and not have tears. It feels almost fake, unreal. It usually makes me stop crying - or, trying to cry? Can I fully cry without tears? I don't know.

This time, I stopped because there were tears. And I smiled.

In the midst of it all, I smile. Because I had tears.

I've been putting eye drops in multiple times a day for more than half a year now, and it must be working! Because. Tears!

The medicine I take every day that is supposed to maybe help not let the breast cancer return (or maybe just delay it) has dried me out. Everywhere! My skin, there is not enough lotion in this world to make it look healthy and glowing these days. My mouth always has that dry feeling. And my eyes are so dry.

After waiting much too long, I finally went to an eye doctor, who right away linked it with my medicine and ordered me to put eye drops in every 2-3 hours while I'm awake.

Okay, so I never remember to do it quite that often (seriously, that's a lot of eye drops!). But I do it pretty frequently.

Dry eyes are interesting. They make you more sensitive to light. It feels like stuff is constantly stuck in my eye - like someone took a small handful of sand and just dump it in. Sometimes, when it's really bad - it feels like there is a layer of film over my eye. It doesn't affect my vision (though when it first started happening I thought for sure I was going to go blind!)

The eye drops are helping. It didn't seem like it at first! But slowly, slowly my eyes feel better. And I had tears, which is so delightful in so many ways. I hope I don't need to cry a lot in the future, but I do know I feel better about tears, even little ones, should I need to!