Remind Bob Costas Not To Take The Red Eye

I just can’t help myself. I have many other things I need and want to write about but feel compelled to address Bob Costas’ pink eye. It seems to be the pulse of the world right now. He is the NBC commentator for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. At first seeing him with the squinty eye was mildly irritating for us, the viewers, now it is simply ridiculous. I don’t know if I expect this post to be funny or educational or a bit of both. There are a ton of websites following his bout with conjunctivitis. Most of them are humorous. The jokes and hashtags on Twitter about his pink eye have been hilarious. But enough is enough. Someone needs to buy this guy a clue!

Bob Costas’ Pink Eye

This must be the first time in his almost 62 years that he’s had pink eye because he obviously has no idea what he’s doing. Let me explain. It’s not that I’m a know it all or even an expert. I don’t have advice that maybe anyone else would recommend but it has worked for me spendidly. I just can’t sit by idly and watch this guy suffer for days on end. Obviously, I no longer have to watch him since he’s bowed out of commentating the Olympics since it spread to his other eye. But in the interest of getting Matt Lauer out of my line of sight, I’m going to give Bob a hand. A figurative hand. Albeit well washed.

In my youth, when I worked at the Post Office in Milwaukee, I was an LSM (letter sorting machine) operator. We had to sit at machines and type in carrier codes from memory as we read addresses on letters going by at 50 per minute. If I must brag (and believe me, I must), I had the best accuracy on our crew. This was a job I loved and it came naturally to me. The person “keying” would sit at a line of 12 consoles for a half hour or 45 minutes straight (depending on the rotatiion) and then get relieved by someone. The person keying would then go in back for a 15 minute interval to pull already sorted mail as it was separated into bins. Before the bins would get full (the machine would stop if it got too full and there was hell to pay), they would get emptied into marked trays for the carriers.

What has this got to do with pink eye? More than you’d think. Not only was I handling mail that was already handled by machines but countless human hands along the way. Filthy human hands. So there was that factor of touching mail. But the main thing that came into play was that this was basically a factory environment. This wasn’t your tiny corner Post Office. It was a huge block-long building that ran 3 shifts around the clock. From the second I entered the building, I was touching things that thousands of others had touched. Like the door handles, the elevator buttons, lunch tables, chair backs, mail carts, hampers, etc. The list goes on. The biggest culprit for germs had to be the letter sorting machines. With keys like a piano numbered 0-9, you could key any combination. People would sit there and for all I know, they were never cleaned. Handwashing has always been important but you know how many people don’t do it, right? I remember noticing when I went in the bathroom, how many women went in a stall, came out and just left without washing. EW.

Ok, I’ve just about lost you. You’re thinking, “Bob Costas doesn’t work for the PO or use a letter sorting machine. Where is she going with this?!” I am segueing into a story about my first pink eye. Aww, “Baby’s First Pink Eye”, how sweet. It was while I was working there. Like in my mid to late 20’s. All of a sudden, I woke up one day with no warning and my eye was glued shut. I’m going to leave out the gory details but when I pried it open, it was bright red inside on the white part. Yes, that’s the technical term: the white part. I honestly can’t remember if I called in sick. I might have. It was really frowned upon to go into a huge establishment like that with something contagious. Trust me, I found out later when I showed up with chicken pox. 😦

I went to the eye doctor who couldn’t give me what he said would “cure” it because I’m allergic to sulfur (sulfa). He gave me some other drops and sent me on my way. I’ve read a lot about it and it’s supposed to run its’ course on its own. Just ask Bob Costas how well that’s working for him. Over the years many people would show up at work with blood red eyes. Much worse than what I had. It looked so painful, I would cringe just looking at them.

In case you’ve never had pink eye, how it looks is the least of it. Your eye feels really gritty, like there’s sand in it. It also gives your vision a foggy look. The main thing to do is NOT touch your eye AT ALL while you have it. Of course, you can’t think of anything else because it itches like crazy! If you have to touch it, have clean hands, use a clean kleenex to wipe it and wash your hands again. Always throw out the kleenex. I can’t stress this enough! If you’re using eye drops, don’t let the tip of the squeeze bottle touch your eye. Similasan is a brand of holisitic eye drops and they actually used to make a Pink Eye formula. I was told they quit making it but not sure. Now I buy their Allergy Eye Relief eye drops. My eyes are very touchy and at the first sign of trouble, I used them. Instead of rubbing my eyes, I put in the drops and make myself not touch my eyes.

Eye drops FTW

Now back to Bob Costas. My “quick” cure for getting rid of the real Pink Eye is a 2 pronged approach. I use a shot glass filled with warm water. I lean over the sink with the full shot glass and open my eye into it. I might tip it a little back (and end up with it all over myself) but I get the eye open in the warm water. I flush it a few times. As warm as I can stand. It does sting to do this. Then I take a cloth washcloth and get it wet. I might lightly wring it but there’s still a lot of water in it. I fold it in 4 so it’s a square, put it on a clean paper plate and put it in the microwave. Heat it up for awhile. I can’t remember how long but until it is so hot you can’t touch it. Maybe a minute. Take it out of the microwave and as soon as you can handle it with your hands, place it over the infected eye. It is going to hurt or burn because it feels too hot. It also feels good because it feels like you are killing the infection. If you can only do a few seconds, take it away. Keep doing this until you can hold it on there. When it cools off, fold the washcloth the opposite way and put it back in the microwave. It won’t do any good to put a warm or cool washcloth on your infected eye, it has to be HOT. You can do this up to 4 times with the same washcloth without it being contaminated (folding differently every time). As hot as I have it, I figure it is killing all the germs in the washcloth. Do this several times throughout the first day. By the 2nd day, it is so much better you can resume normal activities. If it seems like it’s getting worse, go back to the flushing shot glass and hot washcloth.

Supposedly Bob Costas is being treated by Russian doctors. I’m not going to rip on them but think that maybe they aren’t telling him things because they think EVERYBODY knows this stuff. But I’m starting to wonder if they do. There is no reason on God’s green earth that it should have passed to his other eye if he was doing the right things! Besides not touching your infected eye at all, you stop touching EITHER eye. No good can come from touching your eyes. When you wake up with pink eye, the first thing you need to do is strip your bed and get your sheets washed. Plus any towels you might’ve used. You had your infected eye on that pillow and now you’re going to sleep on it? With the other eye? This is the biggest thing. Just because you can’t see any evidence of it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. I imagine poor Bob C. in a hotel room in Sochi where they don’t clean his sheets every day and if they do, he’s not watching them and they only change the sheets, not the pillow cases. I feel kind of bad for Bob to have his misfortune turn into humor for the viewers but Americans will laugh at anything. That’s why it’s America. We don’t have taste, we just think everything is funny and a big joke.

I take back what I said before. I AM a big know-it-all. I’ve got to go, my eye is starting to bother me. 😉