Eye can't take it!

On Sat morning at 2:45am I woke up with pain in my right eye.  My eye was red and watering a lot.  I thought I might have gotten a tiny hair in my eye, since I got my haircut the evening before, so I got up, removed my contacts, flushed my eye with water and went back to bed.  But within a few minutes my eye hurt so much I couldn't stand to keep my eye closed!  Still thinking I might have a tiny hair in my eye, I repeated the eye flushing and then took some pain reliever before getting back to bed.  But the eye pain became unbearable!  So I got myself dressed, put on my eye glasses, and took myself to the Emergency Room at 4:30am.  Spouse offered to go with me but I told him there was no reason for both of us to be awake at this hour.

Fortunately there was no one in the waiting room so I was able to check-in right away, and was seen by the nurse George within minutes.  George recorded my verbal explanation for my visit, took my vitals, and then put numbing drops in my eye.  Within 10 seconds the terrible pain was gone.

When the doctor came in a few minutes later I explained (again) my situation and he decided to flush my eye again.  His technique was much more thorough than mine as he held my eye open and squirted fluid into it for several seconds.  Then he used a special light and examined my eye.

He told me I had a small abrasion on my pupil.  There's no way of knowing how it occurred, or why it would suddenly wake me from my sleep with such pain, but I'm not ruling out a tiny piece of hair from my haircut getting into my eye.  The doctor gave me a prescription for steroid/antibiotic drops which I obtained before returning home.  He said my eye would likely heal within 2-3 days and told me not to wear my contacts for 5 days.  Here's a photo of me with my new haircut wearing my glasses.

The drops worked well and I've had no further pain. Tomorrow will be day 6 so I will put in fresh lenses and see how it goes.