Zadie's bloody eye

Zadie likes to keep things interesting.  After visiting urgent care with her yesterday afternoon for her respiratory issues and fever that wouldn't quit, we went home.  Her eyes were gunky and I mentioned it (and it was obvious) while talking to the doctor at urgent care.  She didn't say anything about the eyes, though, and didn't prescribe any drops.  Later on in the evening, while we were eating dinner, Zadie must have gagged on something and started throwing up.  For some reason the milk/Carnation she had been drinking for about an hour was a huge chunky disgusting mess that was practically choking Zadie as it was coming up.  As she was struggling to vomit it up. a blood tinged tear ran down her face.  Very shocking, to say the least.  I wiped it away and more blood appeared.  By the time she was done, she had a bunch of blood all around her bottom lashes and she had bloody tear stains down her face.

Sad baby crying bloody tears

I called her pediatrician, and even though it was 8 pm and I expected to get the answering service, they were still in the office!  After talking to her ped, he said he wanted to see her.  Meanwhile, I was frantically paging Dr. Google, looking for something to quickly tell me this was normal.  I couldn't even find anything close to what just happened to Zadie.

The pediatrician called a pediatric ophthalmologist, who was pretty puzzled himself.  He even said that it was odd and he'd never seen it before.  He wanted to see her in her office, and we're going tomorrow morning.  Zadie's pediatrician also said she had conjunctivitis (pink eye).  I'm not sure why the doctor at  urgent care didn't diagnose that.  He prescribed drops and said to irrigate the eyes really well before using the drops.  When I did it later, Zadie was really upset, crying very hard, and she had some more bloody tears.  Both times it happened, it was only from her left eye.  It hasn't happened again, thankfully.

After a lot of googling, BJ found the term haemolacria.  Most of the pages that come up when you search that term are only talking about how rare this condition is.  Wikipedia mentioned that it's sometimes caused by bacterial conjunctivitis.  So we'll see what the doctor says.  Never a dull moment, that's for sure!