Pink Eye, Conjunctivitis, Eye Goop and Getting Rid of It

Since yesterday was a holiday AND we were having people over, it only stands to reason that my offspring woke up with pinkeye in the morning.

This was bound to happen.  My offspring are very good at timing their illnesses to times when even if you wanted to put a call in to the doctor or nurse, they're not going to be there and your only option is to go to the emergency room (since it's the only thing open) and pay you know, like $599.00 for fifteen minutes and then $47.50 for the meds.

Now compound this with the fact that people are expected over and you have a perfect storm just waiting to happen.  In fact, one year we DARED to host Thanksgiving at our house and we found out the day before that our dog had just acquired FLEAS.  FLEAS! (Have I mentioned to you before NOT TO GET A DOG?  Why aren't you listening?)  We threw the dog outside, sprayed it with everything and anything we could find, fumigated the house, opened all the windows, vacuumed and/or burned everything in sight and boiled what couldn't be burned or vacuumed.  This was a very lovely time and such a dear memory.

Anyway, back to the pinkeye.  Really, I should have been expecting SOMETHING.  Well, here was the something.

What to do?

I must admit something here.  The other offspring was prone to conjunctivitis as an itty bitty and I had stored waaaaay in the back of the cupboard some of those old eye drops they give you for lovely situations like this.  But the most recent one was um...well...let's say four years old.  I wasn't too sure of the effectiveness and in the second place, I was wondering what the heck was in that stuff anyway.  But I was DESPERATE!  DESPERATE I SAY!  So on this holiday morning, I dropped two drops of these mystery eye drops into my child's eyeball.  Then I kind of felt bad.  

I do not have any breastmilk on hand (if you're ever in this situation, and you've got some, yes, it seriously works), so I did what I usually do.  I ran over to my Herbal Medicine for Children book to see what they had to say.  They had blends and tinctures and concoctions but none of these things I had on hand, so I had to go to the health food store.  I thought, well, if I stuck poison into this goopy eyeball, I will fix it up by getting some good stuff and not use the poison eyeball drops anymore, I promise.  (Oh the tangled webs of reason devised in the minds of humanity!)

So off to my favorite health food store, the store where they all know everything about everything and if they don't, they'll find out for you.  I wandered up to a nice older lady and asked her what she might recommend for eye goo junk.  She asked what specifically I meant and I had to offer up the shameful "pink eye" (rhymes with stink eye).

I was thinking she'd take me over to the eyeball section and pass off some eyebright tincture or something, but ALAS, NO!  I was wrong!  Without a hesitation, she emphatically said, "Silver!"

Huh?

She brings me to this other section of stuff.  She hands me this thing called Sovereign Silver (it's a teeny glass bottle and it has a spray top).  She says it is an antibiotic spray and will kill anything.  Woah.  Word.  I have heard of it.  I will try it.

Yes, yes, I know that silver (or any heavy metals) in above the limit amounts will kill you from toxifying your body.  Don't freak.  I am on it.

I take it home and give the little eyeball a squirt or two and have my patient blink repeatedly until I say stop.  We repeat this fun every 3-4 hours.  Child wakes up this morning and the eye looks half as red and had no goop upon waking.  One section of it has returned almost completely to normal.

Dude.  Crazysauce.  You can also use it on cuts (like instead of hydrogen peroxide).  I am a little cautious and wouldn't use it every time anything came up, although it says you can ("According to the EPA - CASRN 7440-22-4 - daily oral silver reference dose applied to 10 ppm, one may ingest 178,850 servings safely over 70 years.").  The dosage is anywhere from once daily to seven times daily depending on your purpose so I figure my one squirt in the eyeball 4 times a day for two or three days will be okay.

Anyway, thought you might like to hear there are other options out there.

Peace, love and destroy the eye goop!
Ms. Daisy