My regular cadence for this week was to post an update on AVI-family networth for August 2019. However, the events of past week deserve a mention and is the focus of this post.
Adenoviral conjunctivitis (Ad-CS) is hell. As of this writing, its been a full-week since I first developed symptoms of Ad-CS. Its only been 2 days since my doctor diagnosing my eye infection for what it is and living through it, I can only imagine what hell would be like.
Ad-CS was front and center in public domain way back in 2014, when long time NBC Olympics host Bob Costas appeared on the primetime broadcast of Sochi games with one squinting eye.
At the time he said, “Bear with me for a moment as I spare my friends in the press office countless inquiries. I have no choice to go all Peabody and Sherman on you for the next couple of nights since I woke up this morning with my left eye swollen shut and just about as red as the old Soviet flag” further noting that the infection should “resolve itself” quickly. But, that was ways off from how things turned out. By day 5, his second eye was infected. This quote from thecut.com, put it best, “…causing him to look like a teen stoner who also happened to have spent a solid week crying.” Two years on, in 2016, Costas told USA Today that it took him months to fully recover.
I can attest to every word of above. Let me begin from last weekend when it all started. Late evening, last saturday, after Mrs AVI, myself and kids returned back from a trip to IKEA, my left eye started itching. Assuming dry eye syndrome, I did the thing that I usually do, grab dye-eye lubricating drops from our medicine cabinet, and squeeze a couple of drops into the eye. However, this time it was different. The instant I put the lubricating drops in my left-eye, it started to burn and poke as hell. The left-eye turned blood red and I had to rush to bathroom to rinse my eye. For the next hour or so, the pain and throbbing did not seem to abate and I was starting to see sticky stuff oozing out of my left eye. Thinking it to be classic case of pink eye, I dispatched Mrs AVI to purchase OTC pink eye medication, Similasan Pink Eye Relief. The drops did wonders for in calming down my throbbing pain for that evening.
The next day, however I woke up with a swollen red eye, that was tearing up. Pink Eye Relief medication seemed no longer useful in alleveating the poking feeling that I was constantly having in my left eye. That afternoon, I went to see a Urgent Care doctor in my local pharmacy. He diagnosed the pink eye to be of bacterial type and prescribed me neomycine opthalmic ointment.
I was able to get to work on Monday, still with some what red eye. I had no fear of spreading the infection as I thought it was bacterial. By evening of Monday though, things started to take turn for the worse. And later that night, after I watched a TV show, my eye’s started hurting again as bad as was the case on saturday evening when it all began. The next morning, I woke up with not only red puffy eye but also fever and sore throat. I decided to call it quits at work and scheduled an appointment to see an eye doctor.
I saw eye doctor, Dr Shiller, at IssaquahVision.net, later than evening. She diagnosed my infection to be severe case of viral conjunctivitis. She assured me that I was in advanced stage of the illness and beyond the point at which I could be infectious. She told me to stop using neomycine and instead prescribed me anti-inflamatory eye drops, prednisolone, to help with reducing eye-swelling.
Yet another day went by, with hardly any improvement in my symptoms. At this point my right eye also started itching. I decided not to wait and again reached out to my eye doctor clinic. They gave me an appointment for 9.00 AM on Thursday morning to see Dr Steve Cassidy. Since my left eye was constantly bothering me with the poking sensation, Dr Cassidy offered an interesting remedy. He put on bandage contacts. I did not know contacts also can serve as bandage. Indeed, it worked miracles. The poking sensation in my left eye vanished. The inflammation under my eyelid was now brushing against the contacts as opposed to my cornea and that made the difference. He prescribed me yet another (even stronger) anti-inflamatory drug, durezol. In addition, suspecting some bacterial infection, he also prescribed me zylet eye drops. Feeling much better and with two new eye drops, I headed back to work. By the time I came home that day, though, my left eye again started hurting and right eye had turned blood red.
This led to yet another visit to see Dr Cassidy the next day. At this point in time, doctor finally concluded that I was suffering from worse case of Ad-CS and the only treatment to halt the progression of infection for the worse would be the use of off-label betadine. The use of betadine is still not FDA approved, however some lab studies have demonstrated efficacy for use of betadine to halt the progress of Ad-CS. Dr Cassidy warned me that the treatment protocol will hurt as if “giving child-birth”. While I would never know how much it hurts for child-birth, I sure came to find out that betadine in infected eye hurts like nothing else could. It was as if some one just took of my eye balls out of the eye socket. The pain was simply beyond the roof. I stayed at the doctors office for the next 2 hours, after taking two pills of vicodine to alleviate the pain.
Dr Cassidy assured me that betadine treatment was the best way forward to halt the progression of infection and that I should look forward to gradually improving eye condition over the next several days. He led me out of office with two yet another pair of eye drops, blink lubricating eye drop for moderate to severe dry eye, and a full prescription for anti bacterial eye drops, tobramycin.
I have been using these eye drops now for two days. Though my eyes are still bothering me, the irritation is now mild and so is the swelling and the redness in the eye.
While the story continues into the coming week, my hope is that unlike Bob Costas, I can recover from the hell of Ad-CS much sooner.
Since this is a blog about all things money, lets conclude the post summarizing the cost of recovering from Ad-CS. In table, below I have compiled the cost of all the treatments that I went through in the past week with and without insurance, not accounting for loss of productivity at work.
| Treatment | WIthout Insurance | With Insurance |
|---|---|---|
| Care Clinic Visit | $145 | $25 |
| Neomycine eye ointment | $19.11 | $5 |
| Eye-Doctor Medical Visit | $145* (per visit) | $10 (per visit) |
| Prednisolone | $53 | $5 |
| Durezol | $193* | $5* |
| Blink Gel eye drops | $8.39 | $8.39 |
| Tobramycin | $15 | $5 |
A few caveats about the costs: I do not have an inkling of an idea how much a visit to eye doctor for medical condition costs. I have put down a number based on my estimate of what it should cost, I will only find out when I see report from my insurance. Durezol is an expensive drug. I got a sample from my doctor for use for one day.