Friday, August 24, 2007

Word of the Day

So I had an eye doctor's appointment yesterday to determine why, after taking the strongest anti-biotic drops known to man for a week, I still had a pink right eye. Turns out I don't have an infection, I just have an inflammationof my sclera which is the outer white covering of the eye. So I'm on eye steroids to cut that down. Man, my eye is going to be ripped.

Back to the topic at hand, why do I have scleritis? My ophthalmologist says that 90% of these cases are idiopathic. Which is the word of the day. It means "arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause." Or in other words I have no idea why your eye is pink, but take these drops and it will get better. Honest.

This easily displaces my next favorite medical term: cyanotic. It means blue. So if you see an episode ER where doctors yell about someone asphyxiating being cyanotic, it means he's turning blue from lack of oxygen.

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