When on Thursday I started getting headaches when I used my mobile phone I became worried, by Saturday morning I had a host of symptoms and was starting to be frightened for my long-term health. Read more about this in Part 3 if you’ve not already.

By three o’clock my eye had gotten much worse. It was extremely bloodshot with one particular area of my eye looking as though it had been damaged in some way. There was a partial ring of bloodshot vessels surrounding 20% of the circumference of my iris. When I looked in the mirror I could see an off white bubble just next to the most bloodshot part of my eye, a disfiguration of my actual iris. I was horrified. The familiar circle of my iris looked as though it had had a tiny circular bite taken out of it. I couldn’t quite believe what was happening to me. Not only had my eye become terribly painful and watery, it was accompanied with an unpleasant scrapping sensation with white hot pin prick pain every time I closed my eye lid or blinked.

Whilst looking in the mirror, I realised what the horrible scrapping sensation I’d been experiencing was (which I must reitterate was now excruciatingly painful). Every time I closed my eye I could feel my eye lid scrapping over the bubble and it made my eye water like mad. It was so raised that it was actually scraping against my eyelid now. Not only did my eyeball have a dull throbbing ache but at the point where the bubble was it hurt with a sharp stabbing pain.

By this point I was pretty much convinced I’d got some kind of Cancer of the Eye. More Google Research didn’t help:

• Adult Eye Cancer – [Link Now Dead]
• Eye Melanoma – [Link Now Dead]

I attempted to contact the out of hours Doctor via the emergency number but there was a queue and I still felt it might wait until Monday. I think I was just frightened by then and attempting to put it off. So I rang NHS Direct to ask their advice and they told me in no uncertain terms to go to Casualty. I went directly to the Accident & Emergency Department at the local hospital, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI). Read more about my experiences at RLI in Part 5.