When it rains it pours...

Several weeks ago our study on Wednesday night youth class was on the book of Job. The lesson focused on just a few verses but after reading those verses I found myself almost reading the entire book. It's good stuff, Satan went after Job over and over and over again and through it all Job kept his faith in God and never gave in. I found it amazing the faith that Job kept and going through all that with his wife and friends turning on him I wonder if I was put in that same situation how I would react. That was the day before the Aviator gave us fits. While I am in no way comparing our situation to the one of Job's, he went through way worse stuff than we did, we have definitely had our share of troubles at times these past few weeks. During those times when I want to say, "Why God, why us?", I find myself thinking back to Job and his faith and it gives me much encouragement. Some might think of our problems as trivial but even the trivial things mount. First we had the Aviator issue which I've blogged on numerous times, then Malachi continues to have health issues which we now to go to a specialist in Kansas City this week to see, then the drama with our air conditioner on our vacation which led to a 15.5 hour marathon driving session with 3 adults and 2 kids, then I found out today I have a bad viral eye infection which I'll tell you more about in a bit, finally today when I was leaving the eye doctor the car wouldn't start! All it needed was a new battery but still one thing after another and believe me the $$'s are starting to add up for all of this. We now have the next three days with nothing to do except for church on Sunday so we are locking ourselves up at home and going to try to avoid any more trouble!

About the eye infection, I was/am an abuser of my contacts. Even after going to the doctor every year and getting the same lecture after lecture about how I would pay for this some day I continued to ignore the eye doctor. She would say over and over that if you abuse your eyes they will abuse you. I abused my eyes, the contacts I wore were for 30 day usage, meaning I could wear them 30 days straight without taking them out and after 30 days I put in a new pair. I would literally go months without taking them out. Last year I only got a sixth month refill and I still have some left. Today though was the day of reckoning for my eyes and I hope they don't win. About three weeks ago I started noticing redness in one eye. Whenever I would take out my contact and put in eye drops the redness went away and everything appeared ok. Then about two weeks ago I started getting red in both eyes and the redness would go from eye to eye and sometimes both and sometimes it would go away. It got much worse while we were on vacation so I decided I would go in for my annual exam and also get the infection taken care of. I woke up this morning at 8:40, after getting home around 1:30, and immediately called. They said if I was there by 9:20 they would see me. I made it and got in quickly. Got my regular exam taken care of then I got the low down on my infection. I have a viral infection of the cornea. The cornea is the clear dome over the colored part of your eye. There are not antibodies in the cornea so if you get an infection there it's very hard to fight on your own. On top of that when you have a viral infection medicine can't treat it so it makes it even worse. The antibodies on the white part of the eye move over to the cornea on a temporary basis to fight the infection. When you wear contacts those antibodies get very angry and swell up on the white part trying to get to the cornea. That's what causes the redness and also what casues the redness to go away when a person takes out their contacts. If you push this infection long enough the antibodies get all messed up, forget where they live, and you can also cause permanent scarring on the cornea, which basically means you have permanet scratches on your line of vision. She does not think that mine is to that point but mine is bad enough that we have to be extremely careful. She forbid me to put contacts in for 2 weeks and suggested longer. If you put the contact on and the infection isn't gone you have to go back to square one, which would mean another extended time without contacts. I am going to schedule follow ups every two weeks until I am cleared to put in contacts again. It's possible, not highly likely, but not highly unlikely either, that I have become a carrier of the virus which would make wearing contacts again very hard. I pray that this is not the case and that in two weeks I'm cleared up. Until then I'll be wearing glasses. Warning to all of you contact wearers though, I thought I was too tough to have any problems with not following the doctors orders but I was wrong. Take care of your eyes.