The Insect Who is Now Living in My Eye

Oh, the adventure of living in Bali!

My husband and I went for a walk along a trail through rice paddies, and I came back with the sudden urge to claw my eye out. But I didn't think anything of it, and I certainly didn't think it was an eye infection. I put eye drops in, took my contacts out, found an eyelash and assumed it was the culprit.

Even the next day when redness emerged across my eye like a seeping ink blot, I didn't think it was an eye infection. I still just thought my eye was slightly irritated. Despite the rainiest dry season Bali has ever seen (in the words of the locals, "It's all upside down upstairs.") there is still a bit of dust floating around that we Westerners have to build up immunities for. I thought this was all I was doing or one of those rascally dust particles had maybe just scratched my eye.

I do know that contact lens wearers are much more susceptible to eye infections, but in almost twenty years of wearing contacts, I have never had an eye infection. I never even had pink eye as a child. The only eye related event that landed me in the Emergency Room happened at the expense of my little sister when she scratched my eyeball the morning of my Uncle's wedding. I was six.

I guess I assumed I was immune to eye infections. So, like an idiot, I continued to attempt to wear my contacts a little bit during the day when I thought this little irritation had passed. Which is how I ended up looking at a house, with my eye tearing like Niagara Falls, bright red, and so uncomfortable, I thought that I would remove my entire eyeball when I finally got a chance to take out my contact.

Luckily, for me the house we looking at was down the street from three different clinics. One was an Ayurvedic Clinic (this may be why Bali feels familiar is that it is just as woo woo metaphysical as Boulder, CO or Portland/Eugene, OR), one was a Midwife clinic and one was a 24 hour regular clinic. We missed the turn for the regular clinic, so we turned at the next sign we saw that said, "Clinic." This is how we ended up at the Midwife Clinic where a doctor arrives at 5pm. Because it was 3pm, I saw a nurse. She spoke a only a little English.

First, I begged for a glass or some kind of container to put my contact. She finally understood what I was asking for and found me an appropriate container with a lid. She then handed me a container of eye drops and told me to take them every four hours. When I asked her what was wrong with it, she said, "You have an insect in your eye."

I said, "No, no. We went for a walk and I think it was a speck of dust that flew in my eye, not an insect."
She said, "No, it's an insect. You have an insect living in your eye. It should be gone in a few days."
I insisted she was wrong, but asked how much I owed her. She pointed to the donation box. I took out my wallet and gave her two 10,000 rupea bills, thinking that about twenty dollars was about right for a donation to a Midwife Clinic in the middle of Bali. I knew I was grumpy because I was so uncomfortable, and she was very sweet in trying to prevent me from clawing my own eye out Oedipus style. And I speak no Bahasa; she spoke only the little English I got, so I had no idea what kind of insect I had in my eye, if it was a contagious insect, if it would eventually hatch eggs in there or any other details that might have been helpful in such a predicament.

It took me three hours to realize she was trying to tell me that I had an infection in my eye. I realized that at about the same time I realized I had figured the currency wrong and that I did not give her twenty dollars. I gave her two dollars. So in addition to feeling like an idiot, I now felt like an asshole as well. A cheap one.

Two days later, we stopped by the clinic so I could atone for my sins. No one was around, so I snuck in the room where the donation box was and slipped in two 100,000 rupea bills.

A week later, my eye infection was much better, but not quite gone. Because my nurse of Entomology had told me that my insect would move onto his next destination within a few days, and it was now six days later, and the redness was mostly, but not quite, gone, I thought I'd give my contacts a try.

I am rather dense when it comes to sickness and injuries. I can have a hole in my face and insist I am fine and that it needs nothing more than a band-aid and certainly not a trip to the Emergency Room nor five stitches. Mostly, I just hate hospitals. Specifically, I hate hospital waiting rooms.

I had my contacts in not even ten minutes, before I again was struck with the urge to follow Oedipus's lead. My husband told me not to rush it or be dumb. Two hours later, I realized I had finished off the bottle of eye drops. Despite my hatred of waiting rooms, I have an even bigger fear of my own husband thinking I am dumb. So off to the official 24 hour English speaking Expat clinic in Ubud.

We all have heard the reports of the state of health care in the US. In the past, I have been known to idealize the health care systems of other countries (usually France) though in my time abroad I have learned that every country struggles with the quagmire of getting quality health care to its citizens. So I don't want to idealize the system in Bali at all. Especially after my limited experience here. But there are certainly a few key differences worth mentioning.

The first? The nurse met us at the door and opened the door for us as he welcomed us in. The second? He apologized that there was only one doctor who was currently seeing a patient, so we would have to wait. My husband and I waited five minutes.

The doctor spoke English, looked at the bottle of medicine I had been taking, then asked me to lie down on an examining table. Because my husband was in the room, she pulled the curtain around behind her so we would have privacy. I thought this was cute as she was giving me an eye examination and not say, a pelvic examination. She was very nice, though she did scold me for my attempt to wear my contacts, but said that it should really be gone within two days. Three at the most. We paid thirty-five dollars for the consultation and the medicine.

The name of the insect in my eye? Acute conjunctivitis. When I asked what caused it, the nurse said, there were several germs and things that we Westerners didn't have immunities for and that probably a speck of dirt or an insect flew into my eye.

Damn insects.