Oh stinky buttery boloes! Eye stye!

[PrettyCandles]

I'm growing my very first ever eye stye. The timing is an utter pisser: tomorrow we're going to spend four days with my parents and the rest of the family, and the following BH weekend we're at the ILs! Either is stressful enough without the addition of a foul great weeping bubo!

And I'm still not quite over flu, coughing like a 60-a-day smoker, and flaking with exhaustion by the afternoon.

And I'm two weeks into a four-week course of ointment around my eyes - exactly where the stye is growing.

It's not fair! Weep! Wail! Groan.

Is there anything I can do about the stye?

(Pirate eye-patch from the dress-up box? )

Dh suggested squeezing it like a zit.

Well it may well pop on it's own. If you are taking antibiotic ointment that will probably help anyway but the issue is the ointment is killing the nice little creatures who live on your eyelashes and help eat the grease so you are getting eyelid zits (which actually is what a stye is, an infection of the eyelash hole) - now doesn't that make you feel better

Some people find a hot flannel helps bring it to a head and pop though. But a pirate costume could work. Very Jean Paul Gaultier.

Unfortunately (?) ointment is hydrocortisone, not antibiotics. I wonder whether the greasy Hc might even be partly responsible.

Presumably there's no way of changing what will happen to it? Like a zit it just has to be tolerated until it bursts and can then heal? In which case, speeding it up sounds a good idea.

I am so not looking forward to this weekend event. I know my mum. She will be all over me about my cough, and now she'll have another target for her concern. Aaaargh!

Yup. You can pop to Boots and buy antibiotic ointment though - it costs about a fiver and will make it go in two days.

Dispatching dh forthwith!

Thanks!

I would do the hot flannel AND the antibiotic ointment to make sure it's over by Sunday if I were you. They are an absolute bugger, so sore and unsightly and very common when people are getting over systemic infections. Don't worry though, there will be no lasting damage. Hope you feel better soon :)

Hoyt compress is the way forward.

Antibiotic cream doesn't tend to penetrate deep enough in the skin to clear a stye.

Actually eyelid are very absorbent and do take in the cream quite well DBennett - I've had recurrent styes for years and GP recommended the AB ointment and it did the trick v quickly. (though I tend to go with hot compresses first because I don't want to overuse ABs).

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer.

Both NHS and Patient.UK both state that antibiotics are not recommended.

I just added a (not the only) reason why they don't.

Dh wasn't sure what to get, so he asked the pharmacist, who recommended chloramphenicol ointment.

Chloramphenicol is to be used for (suspected) bacterial conjunctivitis.

The pharmacist should not have supplied it for another condition.

I've had some success with (grit your teeth) pulling out the eyelash that's growing out of the infected pore with tweezers. It lets the pus out.

But it's bloody sore, I won't lie to you..

I was going to, suzi, but it's between eyelashes - there isn't anything growing out of it.

Why not cloramphenicol, if it's a bacterial infection?

Well wiki is with me on this - and since it's most likely a staph infection, why the bloody hell would it not work?

The wiki references this website which says that the ointment is only useful if the lesion is open or there is an associated infection of superficial structures.

Not many antibiotic ointments penetrate well through the skin.
Which is why oral antibiotics have to be used so much.

There are also issues regarding the risk of antibiotic resistance on a self limiting condition but with chloramphenicol this a relatively moot point as it's rarely outside of self-limiting eye conditions.

I did not expect to be given antibiotic ointment for an enclosed infection IYSWIM. The boil was still forming, there was no open wound yet. But in the less-than-24h since I started using the cream the pain and redness has decreased and the white spot has disappeared. So surely the antibiotic is working? I've never before seen a zit start to form and then fade away.

And I haven't used hot compresses.

There are about four sitting on the basin, abandoned when I was distracted before I had a chance to use them!

Glad your stye is better but I can't convince myself the antibiotics were the reason.

Chloramphenicol is a bacteriostatic agent, as in it doesn't kill bacteria just slow their reproduction.

24hrs is probably not enough time to for sufficient concentrations to be present to get a strong effect, especially in non-superficial infections.

Styes are self limiting, external ones (like your from your description) more rapidly. Even if you ignored them some will be gone in a day, more in 2 and almost all by day 4.

One less thing to stress you during family catch up time though.