Have you ever woken up with a swollen eye? Laraine recounts her childhood experience with a rare eyelid condition. Discover what actions she took to alleviate the persistent irritation in her eyes and whether or not it helped.

They came one day, I woke and my eye was really swollen and I didn't know what it was.



Hi. I'm Laraine Ridgeway, and I'm from Medford, New Jersey.



Close to ten years ago, I started getting chalazion in my eyelids, in my upper and bottom one. Chalazion are kind of like styes, but styes, I believe are more infection based.



And so then I went to the doctor and the doctor still wasn't sure if it was a stye or not too, so he told me to do hot compresses. I did them for 15 minutes, three to four times a day, and nothing changed, and I got another one. The same thing again, it started off really puffy, really swollen, and then all the hot compresses took it down.



Now that I'd had two, I continued to go to the doctors to look into it more. Finally, they were still there. My mom wanted me to get them removed. They didn't really cause me too much pain, only whenever they came they were very irritating. So I went to get them surgically removed, and after they were all out, they gave me Tetracycline, which was to make my oil thinner so it would go through my oil glands more easily and not clog up as much. And after that, I have never gotten any more. So I guess between the surgery and the Tetracycline, I was cured.