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Would covid infect only a single eye with no other symptoms or complications? (I would imagine any ocular-related complications of covid are just that-- complications of covid infection, a respiratory illness that can affect other systems of the body. Not the sole infection one experiences with no respiratory symptoms?) Has she had a covid antibody test?
When this guy spit in her eye, did she use any kind of product to try to "clean" the eye after that could have injured or irritated it?
Saliva contains a lot of bacteria. She could have definitely had a viral or bacterial infection in her eye which sounds like may have resulted in her having chronic dry eye.
Chronic dry eye is a condition many suffer from and there are treatments but I don’t think there is a cure for it.
My adult daughter, in mid-February 2020, went to a public event on the east coast. Some guy laughed and got spit into her eye. A couple of weeks later her eye became red, inflamed, and itchy. Since then, she has seen everyone from a derm to eye specialists, each with their own opinions and remedies such as antibiotics, eye creams, warm compressions, you name it she's done it. Could this be COVID related? It's hard to say. Back then, you couldn't get a test unless you had a fever. At this point, would it even matter. The damage is done.
It's been over one-year since her initial symptoms. The redness is now replaced with dry, burning, discomfort, and pain. She is desperate for relief and is scared that this will be a life-long problem.
Has anyone experienced anything similar and have some advice?
It's unclear what the exact eye disorder is present which is obviously important for the differential diagnosis. If uveitis was detected with retinitis an vasculitis on eye examination then obviously the first line of treatment would be antibiotics and if those don't work then a further search and quite a bit of testing would be indicated. There isn't any lab tests mentioned inclusive of infectious and non-infectious causes. One important test is a HLA B-27. There was mention of autoimmune testing by the GP but did not mention exactly what test that was. Sjogren syndrome testing would be important SS-A & SS-B antibodies. If the diagnosis is conjunctivitis then the differential diagnosis is different although some overlapping causes in there.
The practice of medicine is very symptom specific and so the signs and symptoms that one is taking about needs to be evaluated with determinations as to what is actually present in the physical examination to narrow it down.
As far as eye infections caused by viruses then yes viral causes are out there for uveitis but most of those are recurrent DNA viruses like herpes. Keep in mind that the eye along with the testes are immune-privileged sites which can result in prolonged viral reservoir post acute infection. It would be unheard of to have it for a year as most of the time its only months. Most of the time it's a recurrent outbreak of reactivation of an infection such as herpes.
It's difficult to speculate exactly as to what abnormality was present on the physical examination if any and so that impacts the differential diagnosis as to the cause. We can't narrow it down without that information.
One needs to follow the recommendations to see which might work. If one doesn't do that then
This is who she has seen, what she's tried, or what they recommend trying:
Optometrist - Antibiotics, hot compress 2x daily, OTC eye drops, artificial tears, Restasis prescription, lid scrubs
Dermatologist - Extended antibiotics in case it was ocular rosacea
Ophthalmologist - Hot compress 1x daily, suggested punctal plugs
Family doctor - Blood work to rule out auto immune, CT scan to check sinuses
Neurologist - Suggested trying Gabapentin prescription for pain behind eye
Self - Cliradex (tea tree wipes), eye supplements for dry eyes
None of the above made a bit of difference. Is there something else she can try that may help?
I think there is a tenuous link at best between this "infection" (has it even been confirmed as an infection by an actual doctor/ophthalmologist?) and getting spit in the eye by someone possibly with COVID - especially since it surfaced TWELVE WEEKS later. Lots of stuff happened in between that time and the appearance of COVID symptoms, which usually appear within ONE WEEK.
Anyway, my "dry" eyes were cured by using "BrioTech HOCL" eye wash twice a day and using hot, moist compresses 2-3 times a day for at least 5 min. each time. I've seen great results BUT, it has taken close to a month. So if she has tried this but only for a week or two before giving up, that may not have been enough time. This is for the type of dry eye resulting from plugged up meibomian glands next to the eye lashes, not to a problem with lack of tears (that's what punctal plugs are for - totally different issue).
So, she has seen five doctors, four of whom are specialists. Rather than keep going to different doctors, expecting a different result, she really needs to go to a large hospital that has a reputable eye clinic. There are quite a few in the US, located at major medical centers. The two that I can think of offhand are the Wilmer Eye Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and the Wills Eye Hospital in Philly. Wills is now a part of the Thomas Jefferson hospital complex. Both have been in the top three in US News rankings of ophthalmology hospitals in the US for decades.
Also Mount Sinai in NYC has always had a renowned eye clinic.
My adult daughter, in mid-February 2020, went to a public event on the east coast. Some guy laughed and got spit into her eye. A couple of weeks later her eye became red, inflamed, and itchy. Since then, she has seen everyone from a derm to eye specialists, each with their own opinions and remedies such as antibiotics, eye creams, warm compressions, you name it she's done it. Could this be COVID related? It's hard to say. Back then, you couldn't get a test unless you had a fever. At this point, would it even matter. The damage is done.
It's been over one-year since her initial symptoms. The redness is now replaced with dry, burning, discomfort, and pain. She is desperate for relief and is scared that this will be a life-long problem.
Has anyone experienced anything similar and have some advice?
Way before Covid, like three years before Covid— maybe four or five.
I called my primary care physician two days before I was supposed to go on vacation. He sent me to an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist did some basic testing, nothing really showed up. So, he gave me a prednisone drop, and an anabiotic drop with instructions to use them the whole time I was on vacation and when I got home he’d look at me again if it was still bothering me.
Didn’t go away. There were still no clear signs as to what was going on. There’s a test they do where they put some sort of a drop in your eye, then use some sort of like litmus paper in it and it’s supposed to detect an infection. This test was repeated on me over and over for months. It never showed completely clear, but it never showed enough of a result to know for sure what was going on. I joked with the doctor I guess I win in the stump the doctor category and he said Yep.
He didn’t want to keep throwing medicine at me because long-term use of these sort of medicines cause their own issues.
One of the things he told me to use was Refresh tears — the preservative free, single use containers. And he explained that I could use the same one for the day. So couple of drops in the morning, a couple of drops in the afternoon, a couple of drops in the evening, couple of drops at bedtime — throw it out. Or as much as I wanted to use them.
I was constantly putting drops in my eye. It took almost a year and I’d go back every 2 or 3 months and tests were repeated, and in fact they did an MRI just in case something weird was going on in my head. They looked at everything they could think to look at. Nothing.
One day I woke up, my eye wasn’t as red within a week the redness was gone. Now, years later, I still use refresh artificial tears. I use a drop in the morning and a drop at night and I use the stuff with preservatives now. That eye does feel the tiniest bit dryer. And has ever since. During the day if I notice it, I have another bottle in my purse.
One thing, and the doctor did ask me this and at the time I wasn’t wearing make up at all. But if you have something like this going on the first thing you should do is not wear make up. Keep the eye clean of stuff. And when you start wearing make up again after something like this, throw all that old stuff out,make sure all your brushes are VERY clean or replaced and start fresh. If this is an infection, and you’re still wearing eye make up, the stuff you’re using is probably helping keep it there. I know it’s difficult for people to give up these habits.
My adult daughter, in mid-February 2020, went to a public event on the east coast. Some guy laughed and got spit into her eye. A couple of weeks later her eye became red, inflamed, and itchy. Since then, she has seen everyone from a derm to eye specialists, each with their own opinions and remedies such as antibiotics, eye creams, warm compressions, you name it she's done it. Could this be COVID related? It's hard to say. Back then, you couldn't get a test unless you had a fever. At this point, would it even matter. The damage is done.
It's been over one-year since her initial symptoms. The redness is now replaced with dry, burning, discomfort, and pain. She is desperate for relief and is scared that this will be a life-long problem.
Has anyone experienced anything similar and have some advice?
Over two years ago, before Covid ever made the news, my son had something similar, and visited eye doctors, dermatologists and infectious disease specialists. After having some diagnostic tests performed, the cause of the periorbital condition remained elusive. The doctor who ordered the tests then suggested my son be hospitalized so he could receive IV antibiotics, an intervention that offered no lasting improvement, if any.
In the meantime, I was searching online for answers, but nothing quite hit the mark.
After almost a year of searching for answers to this perplexing condition, we located a global infectious-disease dermatologist in Philadelphia who initially diagnosed it as Rosacea and prescribed metronidazole and another drug, the name of which I don't recall. It did nothing to arrest the inflammation, tingling sensation, and redness around the eye.
The doctor then prescribed Ivermectin. This actually helped dramatically, although he does still occasionally have some very slight discoloration under the eye that disappears when he takes an immunosuppressant. It was all such a long, frustrating experience for him (and me, too) fraught with so many visits to multiple doctors, that I don't remember who prescribed the immunosuppressant. The other symptoms, such as the tingling, itching, and swelling have not returned.
I would add, this disclaimer, however: Neither my son nor I is a medical doctor (his father and my ex-husband was an infectious disease doctor; however, he died shortly before my son broke out with this periorbital mystery syndrome and before Covid (what terrible irony!)).
I think there is a tenuous link at best between this "infection" (has it even been confirmed as an infection by an actual doctor/ophthalmologist?) and getting spit in the eye by someone possibly with COVID - especially since it surfaced TWELVE WEEKS later. Lots of stuff happened in between that time and the appearance of COVID symptoms, which usually appear within ONE WEEK.
The OP said it was "a couple of weeks." I suppose it's possible that said infection took that long to ramp up enough to be noticeable. However, this was also at a time when covid wasn't super widespread-- sure, it's possible, but less so than a couple months later when it was taking off like wildfire. And, again, I'm still not certain that a respiratory illness that can cause complications in other areas of the body, can cause complications in other areas of the body independently without affecting the respiratory system (I would assume it would need to actually infect the body via the respiratory system first?). We would need to hear from a doctor on that one.
I would think it far more likely that he could have had any of the many many other bacterial or viral infections that can infect the human body, or simply the normal bacteria of the mouth (which can be quite nasty-- present to your doctor with a human bite that broke skin some time and see what they say), that can have a direct effect on the eye.
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Solly says — Be nice!
