Over the summer, my family took a trip to Iceland to see the natural beauty of it. Little did I know I would wake up one morning to have my eyes swelled up like balloons! It was the third morning of our seven-day trip and I was the last to wake up. I was in a deep deep sleep and finally my sister pushed me and I almost fell on the floor from the bed.

“Michelle wake up!” she kept yelling. I finally got up and I could barely open my eyes from what I thought was tiredness.

I threw my hair up in a bun and turned to my sister as she said, “Michelle… what is wrong with your eyes??” in a voice that sounded like she was scared and had just seen a comedy show at the same time. I ran to the bathroom to discover that my eyes looked like two blowfish on my face.

The next few days my eyes would go back to normal by dinnertime, but swell right back up as I woke up the next morning. So many questions were going through my head. What is this? Am I allergic to something? Am I dying?  I had no idea what it was, and the only help I received was a minute clinic telling me to take some Icelandic allergy medicine. Nothing was working. My eyes were so swollen and I was freaking out. Was there some Icelandic disease that I caught?

As my sisters and I got on the plane to go home, I was so nervous. I was going home to be alone with my grandma while my parents went their separate way to Russia. My sisters don’t live with me so they wouldn’t be there with me incase I needed to go to the doctor.

I got home and my sister was nice enough to take me to the doctor. My doctor is an idiot. She told me I had pink eye. How in the world would I have pink eye if my eyes weren’t pink, just swollen? She gave me eye drops, but obviously they weren’t worth the time or money. Days went on and the swelling got worse and worse. Finally I went to the emergency room where I felt like a lab rat. Doctors were taking my blood and x-rays, making sure I wasn’t going blind, touching my eyes, and still nobody knew what I had.

I got referred to two other doctors; an oculoplastic doctor and an infectious disease specialist. Several more doctor visits occurred and still, nobody knew what was wrong with me. Everyday I hated waking up and having to look at my face in the mirror. Although soon, I pretty much accepted the fact that I would look like that forever. It was beginning to become a daily routine; waking up, looking in the mirror, sighing, and then continuing with the day hoping it’d get better.

I finally decided that it would be best for me to stop being so sad and let loose and have fun. It was summer after all. I had a fun night with my friends as if nothing was wrong, and went to bed thinking that my swollen eyes weren’t as bad as I thought. The next morning I woke up and went to go check how swollen my eyes were, only to find myself looking at my normal face. It was a miracle. I kept asking myself why I hadn’t done that earlier. Was being with my friends and having fun really the answer to my problem?

To this day I still do not know what I had, and neither do any of the multiple doctors that I visited during the summer. I would really like to go back to Iceland to see the Northern Lights, but I am super scared that I am just flat out allergic to the country. I hope I never experience having such awful swelling in my eyes ever again.