By Cathy Severson

I recently had a stye in my eye. I have had them a few times in my life, but not very often. It started as an irritation in my right eye. At first, I would try to rub it, but that made it more irritated and uncomfortable. I learned to leave it alone. Initially, I didn’t know what it was, but then the day arrived with the little pimple like bump in the corner of my eye.

Like most people today, whenever I have a symptom, I start with a search query of Google. When I saw the bump, I realized it was a stye, but didn’t really know what a sty was or what caused them.

I was a bit disturbed when I read that a stye is a bacterial infection often cause by staphylococcal. A stye is an infection in the tiny oil glands along the edge of the eyelid that surrounds the base of an eyelash. Putting my hands to my face most likely caused the stye. That is the reason I am writing about the stye in my eye.

Since that time, I’ve been much more aware of how much I put my hands on my face. As we enter flu and cold season, you might want to be aware of how much you put your hands to your face. I am constantly rubbing my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. As a former smoker, I may put my hands to my face more than others, but I now am trying to do better about keeping my hands cleaner.

There are a number of suggestions of what you can do to protect yourself from eye infections.

Minimize putting your hands on your face. If you do, make sure you wash your hands both before and after touching your eyes. Make sure you wash your hands when you medicine in your eyes.

Don’t share eye make-up.

Do not use make-up when your eye is infected as you may reinfect it. If you do use make-up on an infected eye, discard it and start with new.

Do not wear contacts when the eye is infected and make sure you clean the contacts thoroughly before putting the contacts back in your eye.

Wash all your linens and towels that may have come in contact with the infected eye.

I chose not to use any medication. Once the stye formed a pimple, I put warm compresses on it and within two days, it started to heal.

Now, the challenge for me is to keep my hands away from my eyes. It is the number one way of preventing another stye in my eye.