Last month, just as we were nearing the end of school, the school nurse called me and let me know she thought my son had pink eye.
“There have been a few other kids who have it, and it could be that he got something in his eye that irritated it, but you might want to keep it on your radar.”
Fast forward 24 hours later and I’m sitting in the doctor’s office after a 45- minute wait and my eleven-year-old son is telling me,” This is the best day of my life. I don’t have to go to school because of my eyes, but I feel great! Can we go to Wendy’s after this?”
We weren’t home until almost two hours later after waiting to see a doctor then waiting to pick up a prescription. After that day, I learned how much I hate pink eye. I mean, I didn’t get the only benefit that comes from your child being under the weather: they are too tired to act up and don’t feel well enough to complain or pick at their siblings. Of course, no one wants their child to feel sick, but we’ve all basked in the glory that comes when your child needs to rest all day from not feeling well.
Then there’s the part where you have to wash down your entire house and launder all the sheets, pillows, and towels. That took exactly two days and lots of sweat.
The one thing the doctor told him not to do was touch his eyes, which I didn’t think would be a problem because he never touches his eyes, but oh my god why won’t he stop touching his eyes?
And let’s not even talk about how hard it is to force their eyes open while you are trying to get drops in there, or in this case, a very thick Vaseline-like goo. I was instructed to put an inch worth of medicine in each eye three times a day– that’s a lot of stuff to shove in the eyeballs of an unwilling child.
Then you are left to constantly check their siblings’ eyes and you are positive every morning when you wake up your eyes are going to be seared shut because pink eye is so contagious.
You find yourself breathing down your child’s neck reminding them to wash their hands before they open a door, touch a dish or a person, or anything else for that matter.
I hate you pink eye. You gave my kids something really gross that makes it look like they “need to blow their eyes instead of their nose” according to them.
You make kids sick but able to walk around with all their normal energy, yet they can’t go to school, play with their friends, or touch anything without moms of the world freaking out. So basically their energy brews while their parents can’t take their eyes off of them for fear they are going to spread germs all over the damn place as we chase them around with an all-natural cleaner.
Then they get bored, whine about it, tell us all their problems, and our eyes itch every time we look at them.
We pray every night our other kids don’t wake up the next day with a roaring case of it lest we have to spend the day in the doctor’s office again because apparently, you can’t squirt the same bottle of medicine in more than one person’s eye, which is total bullshit.
I hate you, pink eye, I hate you so damn much.
