My Two-Week Standoff With a Mystery Speck

A couple of weeks ago, I was riding in the side-by-side with my husband when a huge gust of wind blew dirt, leaves, and who-knows-what else directly into our faces. I felt something hit my eye, but I shrugged it off, used a few eye drops, and assumed whatever it was would wash right out.

Fast forward two weeks… and my eye was still hurting. It constantly felt like something was stuck in there, it was painful to blink, and I had this strange “headache” radiating around my eye socket. I kept convincing myself it was just dry eye and drowned it in lubricating drops.

Finally, I admitted defeat: something wasn’t right. I started searching for a local eye doctor—because who wants a two-hour round-trip for a maybe-nothing eye issue?—but the only one taking new patients and open on a Saturday was still 45 minutes away. I booked the appointment anyway, feeling slightly dramatic and fully convinced they’d tell me it was irritation or allergies.

Nope.

The optometrist was incredibly thorough. They ran scans to rule out a retinal detachment, then gave me a vision test—which I somehow aced. Even with my irritated eye, I could still see 20/25 in my left eye. At that point, I felt a little ridiculous for driving 45 minutes for what I was sure was nothing.

Then she examined my eye. She looked… looked again… and then said the words that suddenly made everything make sense:

“You have a foreign body embedded in the lower part of your cornea.”

A whole two weeks… with something stuck to my eyeball. Lovely.

She numbed my eye and plucked out the tiny culprit—so small we couldn’t even identify what it was. She prescribed antibiotic drops, told me to keep using the preservative-free tears, and made it very clear that if my symptoms weren’t gone in five days (or got worse), I needed to call immediately.

She also gently told me that I should have come in much sooner… because apparently I was flirting with an eye ulcer.

So now I’m using my medicated drops, resting my eye, and marveling at how something smaller than a speck of dust can cause two weeks of misery. It’s funny how a random gust of wind can derail your week—and how ignoring something small can turn into something much bigger.

Have you ever had a “random moment gone wrong” that taught you a lesson the hard way?

With love & glitter,
Valerie