What first-aid treatment could you apply if your eye is pinkish-reddish as well as swollen and watery and half-closed?

Answer 1

In medical treatment, the first step is getting the history and the details, and then acting (or not acting -- sometimes not acting is the better cure). I mention this as I'd have loved to have more details about this: When did it appear? How long before it became what it is now? Did anything unusual happen that day or two days before? What's the color of the discharge? Without this data, it'll be harder, but let's try: First, look at the eyeball itself. It there anything wrong with it, or is most of the problem from the eyelid (I'm betting it's eyelid). If you can spot a problem WITH the eyeball itself (an insect bite or something like that, head for the doctor -- it's out of my range). As you don't mention a trauma -- getting thwacked in the eye with a tennis ball or something, I'm going to assume this is not a trauma, but something else at work. Look at the area -- can you find a bug bite that might have caused this? If so, treat as a bug bite! Next, take your temperature. Allergies don't cause temperatures, so if you have one, it's likely to be an infectious process. Also, rechecking your temp can let you know how you're doing in curing this. Much of what you've described sounds like your body doing what it does to fight off something else. The question is: infection or allergy? The overall redness makes me think *maybe* allergy, but whatever we do has to address both. I notice too that you're asking about alternative medical solutions -- not my forte, but let's try and see if I can some up with something. It's important that you treat the discharge as an infectious agent. Maybe it's not, but it costs nothing to be careful. This means washing your hands after every time you touch anywhere near it. And for goodness' sake, don't touch your other, healthy eye! Every so often -- twice or so per day -- wash this area with clean water and a disposable gauze. I'd start with ice-packing the eye -- 10 minutes on, then 10 minutes off, for an hour or so -- to reduce the swelling, so we can see what we're getting into. Normally, I'd recommend aspirin (why aspirin? anti-febrile, anti-inflammatory, been around forever so no surprises, and very few folks allergic to that -- I'd like to cut down on the redness). If you can't use aspirin, try and find a substitute, and remember you want an anti-inflammatory. At night, I'd pack this. By pack, I mean I'd place two 2"x2" sponge or gauze pads over the eye, and gently secure them, perhaps with a loosely applied ace wrap. In both allopathic and homeopathic medicine, most of the time what we're doing is palliative treatment: we're trying to make the patient comfortable and keep things from getting worse, while the body does the real work and heals itself. Unless this doesn't get better fast, this is the approach we'll use here. Now -- just for comparison -- here's what I'd do in an allopathic approach. Perhaps you can tailor it to work with homeopathic ways. First, I'd do everything I mentioned above. As this clearly relates to inflammation, I'd start you on Benadryl (diphenhydromine), at the dose recommended on the box (35mg?), and ibuprofen or aspirin, and see if things got better, worse, or stayed the same. If there was no improvement, I'd culture the discharge and see if it's a biologic agent -- if so, I'd go after it with antibiotics. Right here, I'm going to guess it's pinkeye, and that a doctor would go for Gentamycin drops. Unless the labs gave me a reason to take a different approach, I'd consider treating this topically. If it's an infection, use a topical antibiotic, maybe coupled with a systemic dose taken PO (orally). If it's not an infection, I'd look towards topical steroids -- cortisporin ophthalmic, maybe. Please note as you read this that I am NOT a doctor -- just a well-meaning guy. This advice, however well meant, is not the substitute for a session with a real, license-toting doctor. Feel free to let me know more -- how this worked, what to do, etc.