I’m on my third consecutive treatment for conjunctivitis, commonly known as “Pink Eye” or “Hyper-Contagious Eye Snot”. I am not exactly sure what happened.

I’ll bet you think I got it from my kids. I did not, and furthermore, nobody else in the house has contracted it. I trust this means that the DEFCON 3 Biohazard Protocol I’ve been following has been sufficient. Mainly, I’ve been behaving as though my eyes were hollow smoldering sockets of radioactive refuse. Every day I change my pillowcase, go through something like a hundred Kleenexes, and perform the Ritual of the Eye Drops four times.

No, this first infection set in on the heels of a severe cold followed by a sinus infection that kept me sick and at home for a good chunk of January. It was an extraordinarily severe cold that hit me on the 10th, seemed to disappear a day later, but then return with a vengeance a night later. Five days into the cold the pink eye flared up in my left eye, fast—it bloomed over the course of about 20 minutes.

I treated that eye alone, which was foolish, because as it was clearing up, my right eye got infected. So then I started treating both eyes, but on the night of the 24th, still in the middle of treatment, my left eye flared up again.

I’m bewildered and am trying not to imagine that I’ve got some sort of antibiotic-resistant conjunctivitis. I have now been continually putting Tobramycin drops in my eyes since January 15th, and I still am waking up with my eyes glued shut, and feeling like there are grains of sand in my eyes at night.

So where did it come from? My dad and brother came down with pink eye one day before I did, although we had not seen each other face-to-face for 11 days prior. My dad’s doctor said that pink eye is simply “prevalent” at this time in Tucson, so that as soon as your immune system’s guard is down, the bacteria take advantage (which I know is what happened with my sinus infection).

Weird to think about, isn’t it? Colonies of bacteria all over you, crouching at the gate, waiting for it to drop just enough that they can run in and plant their flag. Rah for immune systems, and an extra rah for my own as soon as it picks up the slack.