There's a Fungus Among Us

It has been a while, I know. Usually long time gaps in between blog posts can be blamed on busy schedules, traveling, lack of good pictures, etc. This one can be blamed on an eye infection.

It all started two Friday's ago, when John started having eye irritation and light sensitivity in his left eye. Two visits to his local optometrist and two different antibiotic drops later, we found ourselves driving to MUSC in Charleston at 11pm last Sunday night after being told to do so by Dr. Kerry Solomon, the corneal guru at MUSC. The pain was unbearable and John's vision had started to go in the eye, which concerned the doctor most. When we arrived at the hospital, John was seen by a resident on Dr. Solomon's team. He informed us that John would need to have cultures taken of his eye to see exactly what type of infection was present. John has since spread the word that if you're ever told that you need to have a culture taken of your eye....RUN!!!!! The doctor (who was our age) basically took these small razor blade looking things and scraped his eye with it...8 times! It was so horrible looking, but thankfully they numbed him. From there we were told to treat it as if it were bacterial, which is the most common cause of eye infections. The other cases being either viral or fungal. To treat it properly, John had to do the eye drops every 30 minutes around the clock! (He was also allowed narcotics, thank the LORD!)

After doing that for 2 days, several trips back and forth to Charleston, the eye was healing well and John's vision began to return. All good signs, right? On Thursday John returned to Dr. Solomon's office only to learn that his cultures were finally back. The infection was not bacterial, but fungal. They had to scrape his eye again to permeate the first corneal layer so that the new drops, the antifungal ones, could reach the infection. No more drops every 30 minutes, just every hour. Around the clock. Plus antibiotic drops 4 times a day. Plus no contacts for at least 6 weeks. Plus...the potential for more scraping in the near future. John's going today for his 6th trip to Charleston in 8 days. He's become 'that guy' who all the interns and residents have to check out because we've been told that fungal eye infections are pretty rare. I guess that's just one more way that John proves to be on in a million.

Everyone wants to know how he got this. From what we're told, it probably started from a small corneal scratch that could have been caused by a piece of sand, dirt, etc. in his eye. It could have been so small that he didn't even notice it. Then, fusarium, the mold that grew on his fungal culture, found it's way into his eye. It's a common mold found in dirt and on plants in the southern states that if not in your eye is harmless. But, since John is a contact wearer, the infection had perfect breeding grounds once it was covered up by his contact. We're told it's not more 'difficult' to treat than a bacterial or viral infection, but that it just takes a lot longer. We're praying that he can soon space out the drops and not have to take them during the night. Waking up every hour doesn't exactly equal a full REM sleep cycle, so he's a little tired to say the least.

Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers and phone calls. A special HUGE thanks to both of our parents, Jason, Lauren and Leslie who helped out tremendously with Jack and Finn, rides to and from Charleston and meals. We could not have survived this far without you.

Though the past 10 days have royally stunk, we absolutely realize how blessed John is to be going through something so minor compared to what a lot of other people are going through. (Although...after having a beetle perforate his ear drum late last year and now this, John is kind of a walking freak show now.) We have managed to have some funny stories emerge out of the all the eye drop administrations and eye scrapings. Despite Johnny's urgings, I refrained from taking any pictures of the eye scraping. If John didn't appreciate me posting goofy pictures from our in house date night, I doubt he would have approved of those. I also went ape on a lady at Arbys for making my sandwich wrong on the day that we found out that the infection was fungal and that more scraping was needed. We made the poor decision of taking the kids to Charleston that day, thinking we were going to receive good news and would be able to enjoy the day. Instead, I harassed the Arby's chick, John found himself yet again needing Hydrocodone and we forced both sets of parents to make really inconvenient scheduling decisions for our benefit. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

But today is another day! Hopefully we can post some awesome news on John's improvement soon!!!

Have a super day!!!