Why Did My Eye Turn Red? Subconjuctival Hemorrhages

So, I woke up one morning and one of my eyes was red. Not red as in bloodshot, but RED!! Like, half my eye looked bloody, as you can see in the photo on the right.

I tried to think of something that happened that could have caused it, but couldn't come up with any reason. I wasn't hit in the eye, or on the side of my head. I didn't rub my eye really hard. But here it was, first thing when I woke up!

I looked it up online and found out it's called a "Subconjunctival Hemorrhage," which basically means that a blood vessel broke and the blood leaked under the top layer of my eye.

I took photos of my eye every day, so you could see how it looked on day #1, and how long it took to heal, and the progression of the red throughout the healing process.

You can see that on day #2, the blood must be following a blood vessel line or something, creeping toward my iris, as the most spread-out part starts to heal.

I don't know about for anyone else, but can only speak to my own experience.

My husband was the one that told me that my eye was red when I woke up. Before I looked at it, I thought it felt kind of swollen. Not as in, feeling it with my fingers or anything. Just the eye itself felt swollen. Just a little. And maybe a little dry.

Other than that, I really didn't feel anything. It just felt...maybe a little scratchy in that area. Kind of irritated, like when you've stayed up too late and your eyes feel tired and dry.

So although it LOOKS really bad, it doesn't feel much like anything.

During the healing process, I put eye drops in my eye to help with the feeling of dryness. Even though the dryness wasn't all that much, the eye drops felt good.

When I use eye drops, or eye lubricant, I prefer to use the individual vials, which are preservative-free. There are several different brands of preservative-free eye drops, such as Systane, Allergan Optive and Tears Naturale. The one I use, is Tears Natruale, but any preservative-free eye drops will do.

On day #5, my eye has already healed quite a bit, and looks like a normal blood-shot eye might look.

It was interesting how the blood near the iris, which wasn't there on day one, but spread after a couple of days, was the last part to heal. It stayed a bit redder than the rest.

And the main part of my eye, was still kind of yellowish during the healing process.

By day #6, my eye was looking pretty good. Way better than day #1!

And by day #7, after just one week, you can see how much my eye had healed up. Compare the photos of day#6 and day#7. You can see that on day #7, almost all of the yellow had cleared up, and my eye was finally mostly white again.

So if this happens to you, at least now you will know kind of what to expect. And don't freak out. As you can see, eyes heal fairly quickly.

The last bits of red are clearing up. So happy at this point that most of the red is gone.

It's so strange how something like this can happen without any cause.

The body is a miraculous thing, with awesome healing ability.