A request for healing..

I'm not normally one to ask for healing, much less for myself, but I could use all the love and strength of dear friends and new friends and even strangers alike at this point.

Those of you who have known me for a long while will probably recall that about a year ago I woke up one morning with an eye that was red, goopy with yellow grossness and felt as if I had a rock lodged under my eyelid. I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with ocular herpes, part of the strain of herpes that is responsible for canker and cold sores. That doesn't sound too bad, until you realize two things - you're getting canker sores in your eyes and it's incurable, just like all forms of the disease. It can lay dormant in your system until it is triggered by something and let me tell you, the list of triggers is a mile long. It can get angry over anything. For me, the main culprits seem to be stress, smoke (which means I can't step foot into most eating establishments or bars in the south), dry eye and my hormones.

To tell you how bad this thing is, not only is it extremely uncomfortable, but each outbreak leaves permanent scarring in your eye. Mine happens to form right at the edge of my cornea, so each new piece of scar tissue could very likely take out a wee bit of my ability to see. Too much scar tissue can lead to blindness. If it were just discomfort I'd be ok with it, but having the fear of going blind looming over me for the rest of my life does not a happy girl make.

After the diagnosis, it took us 6 months to beat the infection down to the point where it would stay down. We had a few false successes in there, when the doctors would look at it and see that the lesion was healed over and new skin was there. We'd wean my eye off of the drops and things would be great for 3 days to a month before it all came bursting out again. Finally however, we managed to get it to go back to sleep and that lasted for nearly a year.

Until today, when I woke up and it is as bad and painful as it when I first went to see the doctors. It's a Sunday and anyone who lives in the South knows nothing is open ever on Sunday, but I managed to get in touch with a doctor via his emergency line and he is making a special trip out to meet me because this stuff is serious once it erupts.

Despite my apparent calmness through text, I am a bundle of awful emotions right now and going through the grief, anger, fist shaking, depression, frustration and all the other nasties that come along with this nonsense that comes with this sort of thing all over again. I don't want to lose more of my vision, I'm an artist and that thought terrifies me to levels of fear I didn't know my soul was capable of knowing.

So, what I'm asking is to please send me any strength and healing you can muster up for me. Light a candle, say a blessing, take a moment to revel in your own healthy beautiful eyes.

I'll let you know what the doctor says and keep you posted as I tackle this demon again. I'm not about to let this turn into a medical drama blog, but I'll sprinkle updates in with my cheerier stuff and the hell am I letting this keep me from 31 days of Halloweening.