Pink Eye?

Got a phone call from Tiffany last night saying she wanted to take Kylie to the doctor today because she thinks she has pink eye; so that’s what we did today. Kylie’s eyes have been slightly red and watery for a day or two now, but we thought it was allergies (and it may still be, more on that in a minute), especially since both Mommy and Mimi have spring allergies and Kylie was just outside the other day for soccer. The allergy medicine had been helping Kylie sleep and seemed to be taming the discharge from her eyes and curbing her morning coughing, so we went with it. However, last night, Mommy noticed that the discharge from Kylie’s right eye had gone from clear to murky greenish color and her eye was redder than normal; hence the decision to go to the doctor today. When Kylie woke this morning her eye was pretty much crusted shut from the odd greenish discharge. This is usually a key sign that something is wrong with Kylie, ever since she was a baby her eyes have always been the key to determining when she was sick or not feeling well. As an infant she she had badly blocked tear ducts, and so now when her eyes get that odd green discharge we know something is typically wrong; it could be a head cold, an ear infection, even allergies, but it’s likely something. So the doctor checked her out today and at the time of her checkup she weighed 49.5 pounds and had no fever, her eyes, of course, were clear; although you could tell that the right one had previously been discharging. This is when the doctor told us that they typically treat conjunctivitis a little more aggressively than any other type of infection, and by that he means that when it comes to the eye and situations like this they will almost always prescribe some form of eye drop medication without a positive test for the infection. The reason being is that the only way to test is to swab the eye and send it off to the lab to see if any cultures grow, the process takes 3 days; so as opposed to waiting they choose to treat. So it is entirely possible that Kylie, in fact, does not have pink eye; but tonight she took her first drops with out issue. Actually she seems to enjoy it and thinks that it is funny when I drop them in.