Why does it hurt when I close my eyes?!
Question:
Why does it hurt when I close my eyes?
Since yesterday, it has felt like there's an eyelash in my right eye, right around the left side of my pupil. It feels fine, though, when my eyes are open. It's whenever I close my eyes that it hurts.
I've tried sleeping, washing my eyes out with clean water, and searching fruitlessly for anything that might be causing irritation. Unfortunately, my eyes look fine, and I can find nothing on, around, or in my eyes that seem to betray the problem to me. Again, it feels like there's an eyelash on the inside of my eyelids that scrapes against my eyes whenever I close them.
Searching both my eyes and the internet for answers, my quest brings me here. Please, help if you can.
Answers:
This often happens when you get an actual eyelash in your eye, and then you rub your eye and the eyelash ends up causing a tiny micro-scratch -- and now even though the eyelash is no longer in your eye, it still feels like it is.
The best thing to do is to avoid wearing contact lenses and use a natural tears type of eye drop (make sure it is a natural tears type and not an eye drop that contains a preservative). Also, avoid things that could cause eye strain (like too much time reading or using the computer).
If it does not feel better within the next 2 days, contact your eye doctor to have him/her examine your eye.
In the future, anytime you feel like there might be something in your eye, use a natural tears eye drop to try to flush it out. When flushing it, lean to the side so that you can try to drop the eye drops into the "ear side" of your eye so that the natural tears eye drops are running towards your nose (and towards the tearduct of your eye).
Try to avoid rubbing, but if you must rub in order to get the eyelash out of your eye, then do it very gently and ALWAYS rub towards your nose - never rub towards your ear (away from your nose), and never rub back and forth.
The reason for rubbing towards your nose and flushing with the drops towards your nose is because that is going towards your tear duct - which is where the eye naturally tries to send foreign objects (like eyelashes or sand or anything else that ends up in your eye).