All throughout 2015, as I walked the bustling streets of Boston and sat through classes at Emerson, I was stuck going through my days hoping that nobody would notice the literal puss wound on my face, or better yet, not notice me at all. I knew I could relate to other people, people who have had eczema or cystic acne or other skin issues. But I also felt utterly alone in this because nobody could give me a name for my ailment. Here I was in my junior year of college, looking like I got punched in the face on a daily basis for months on end and with doctors at a loss for what was causing this.
I must start out by saying the purpose of me writing about this is not to complain about a mild health issue, because while my eye issue was uncomfortable and embarrassing, it wasn’t serious. I recognize how fortunate I am not to be plagued with a life-threatening illness. And yes, I also know how lucky I am to never have suffered from acne in the first 20 years of my life. But this good fortune aside, I am writing this for people who understand the struggle of not understanding what's happening to their body. Because aside from the trauma of living with a very visible health issue on your face, it can be so incredibly confusing, frustrating and downright disheartening to live with an undiagnosed ailment.
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It seemed to have come out of nowhere: one day I was fine, the next day I was bursting into my roommate's bedroom with my eye swollen and red and wanting to know what on earth was happening to my face.
“Oh, it’s probably just a stye,” I remember her assuring me. She suggested I try a warm compress.
Spoiler alert: it was not a stye. Not even close.
Nonetheless, over the next few days I tried warm compresses, knowing they weren’t helping. It was odd, because my eye was itchy and red and puffy and flaky (this is gross, OK), but all of this was not happening inside my eye like pink eye or some sort of infection from my contact lenses. It was happening underneath my eye, on my lower eyelid. Without any improvement, I knew it was time to see a doctor.
Here’s where my health journey gets complicated because I hate doctors. Not just because I don’t like going to places that smell like silicone and have waiting rooms with uncomfortable chairs, but I have a serious distrust of them. And naturally, like any true college student, I can’t afford “real” doctors.
So, reluctant, I trudged to the campus health center only to leave with the same diagnosis I received from my roommate: a stye. I accepted the diagnosis, as you do, but knew deep down that this wasn’t a stye, and if it was, it definitely wasn’t an ordinary one because there was no bump and that's what a stye's supposed to be, I think? But we’re told not to self-diagnose, to avoid Web-MD and trust whatever a doctor tells you, even if they themselves are turning to search engines.
After weeks of warm compresses, I was seeing no improvement so at my mother’s insistence, I went back to the doctor. Rinse and repeat. This went on and on, my semester filled with doctor's visits, a plethora of new diagnoses and suggested treatments. All the while, my eye wasn’t just not getting better, it was getting worse.
To spare you the gory details, my lower eyelid had turned into an open puss wound. On my face. Let me just pause for a moment to tell you to appreciate every day that you don’t have an open puss wound on your face. Seriously. Thank whatever deity you worship.
Because I was honestly miserable. It’s so hard to look in the mirror and feel confident about yourself when you have to face that every day. I would wake up and think Is this something I’m going to have to live with forever? Is this just a part of me now? The girl with the open puss wound. I would call my mom, practically every day, and just break down on the phone (which was awful because crying made my eye worse). I once had a panic attack at a rest stop because I was convinced that an old man in a McDonald's was staring at my eye. Needless to say from an emotional standpoint, it was draining.
I was desperate for anything to fix it and became convinced that the most random things were causing it. I washed my hands obsessively, threw out all my makeup and replaced it (RIP), wore my glasses for awhile, avoided putting any type of skin care product on my face, etc. And I wasn’t just taking the doctor’s advice either. I turned to natural remedies, too. I replaced my makeup remover with coconut oil, and there was even a period of time where I was rubbing garlic on my face because a friend of a friend told me that garlic can be a natural antibiotic (it can be, but I promise it didn’t help my eye).
***
By the time summer rolled around, I made an appointment with a real doctor, who gave me antibiotics that cleared up the infection (but this was something that I later learned was just a secondary infection). At the time, though, I thought problem solved, right? Sure, until the summer was over and I went back to Boston and it started flaring up all over again. And I was left to wonder Am I actually allergic to the city of Boston? and a more haunting thought that maybe this is all just psychosomatic.
***
It’s hard to go to doctors and leave with more questions than answers. It’s hard to hear a doctor say to you, “Wow, that’s so strange” and leave it at that. It’s hard to live with the fear that everything and anything could be causing this negative reaction on your body. Are you allergic to everything you touch? Is your apartment filled with toxic mold? And most importantly, why does literally nobody else seem to have this problem? What’s wrong with me?
These are just my experiences and I know that not everyone has suffered from a mysterious, undiagnosed ailment, but maybe one day you will. Maybe it will just pop up one day overnight. So if it does, I’m here to say your confusing, frustrating and disheartening experience is valid. It’s OK to feel alone and desperate and stuck. It’s OK to call your mom every day and cry.
But it’s also OK to take charge of your health and understand that every doctor doesn’t know everything, but the right doctor will know the right thing. There are answers out there. We live in a world where we expect the answers to come immediately and we expect these answers to come from doctors. But, like me, you could be suffering from the most random thing, something that never would have occurred to you or a physician. After a year of doctor's visits and misery, I ended up at an allergist over this past winter break for a patch testing, which revealed that on top of being allergic to nickel (which I already knew), I had also developed an allergy to chromium and cobalt. Yeah, like from the periodic table. I honestly didn't even know what chromium was. Evidently, these elements are used in several of my favorite makeup brands, and cobalt is used as a blue dye (in detergents and what not). So there it is. All the tears, and medicines, and garlic and the root of my problems were some random elements, ingredients that any average person would overlook. I know it can be frustrating and scary to have no idea what’s wrong with your body, but a year ago I was there and now I have answers (and a normal eye), and I need to say what I needed somebody to say to me when I was going through this: you are not alone.
